Chimps are smarter than many people think

[DMB]

...or are willing to admit.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5877764.ece

It seems chimpanzees, too, are capable of forward planning, and have a sophisticated understanding of past and future. The chimp is also furtive about his behaviour, almost as if he knows he is being sneaky.

“I've never been able to get a good picture of him collecting the stones,” said Mathias Osvath, of Lund University, who has made a study of Santino. “As soon as he sees you he stops.”

Dr Osvath said the chimp's behaviour was the first unambiguous evidence of spontaneous forward planning in a non-human animal...

...“These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” Dr Osvath said.

“It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events.

“They most probably have an 'inner world' like we have when reviewing past episodes of our lives or thinking of days to come.”

[alien billie]

The title of this thread is one word too long.

[PostMortem]

Scientist: Maybe we should finally tell them the big secret: that all the chimps we sent into space came back super-intelligent.
Chimp: No, I don't think we'll be telling them that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFivkuKJpMc

[Brother Daniel]

The title of this thread is one word too long.
Exactly what I was thinking!

[Cath B]

Very interesting link.

I went to a talk by Robin Dunbar (http://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/about/staff/dunbar/)at the Edinburgh Science Festival last year .

He showed a picture of two chimps having sex where the fairly low ranking male was partially visible by the alpha male but the female was hidden from him by a rock. He reckoned that they were showing some degree of Theory of Mind (not to mention sneakiness) by being able to perceive the scene from the Alpha Male's perspective.

[Eudaimonist]

Chimps are very close to humans on the evolutionary tree. I can't say that this result is surprising.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[DMB]

Chimps are very close to humans on the evolutionary tree. I can't say that this result is surprising.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I agree with you, but it is amazing how many people, by no means all creationists, try to deny that they have this sort of capability. I have been reading a very interesting book mainly by Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Primates-Philosophers-Morality-Evolved-Princeton/dp/0691124477/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236673167&sr=1-1).

De Waal, who has decades of experience as a primatologist, is convinced of the sophisticated cognitive skills of chimps, but the same book contains dissenting views from philosophers.

[Eudaimonist]

De Waal, who has decades of experience as a primatologist, is convinced of the sophisticated cognitive skills of chimps, but the same book contains dissenting views from philosophers.

I think there is a need for some people, including philosophers, to view human beings as distinctive from other species. I don't know of any other species that could design and build space capsules, and fly them to the Moon, but in spite of humanity's technological accomplishments, the lines between the human species and other species is blurring. I think this makes some people uncomfortable because the definitions and classifications that used to apply don't any longer, and it is unclear what new ones to create. Perhaps it is almost an existential crisis?


eudaimonia,

Mark

[wordy]

But they are not as intelligent that I had hoped them to be.

Take all the years they have tried to teach them to communicate with humans.

Yes the researcher think they can. But how does one give scientific evidence that they really do.

their usage of symbols may look like a conversation but they are so different from us that it seems odd that they don't relate as we do. I mean if they where really intelligent they would ask such simple questions like.

"Why am I kept here and not being free as I see the chimps are in the video you showed me the other day. They lived in the wild and here I am in a small guarded zoo something. I am prisoner sort of. Where is my rights to be free. Get me a spokesperson for the Animal Rights Movement to support my petitition to get free. "

Yes I tease you but they could at least ask questions Have they ever asked a single question.

I am skeptical to that they are that intelligent. Even a three year old child ask 100 questions a day or more.

Talking about intelligence. A "Caledonian" Crow? was so intelligent that she or he made a tool out of a thread of steel as a hook to get food out of a tube? narrow bottle.

[DMB]

No-one supposes that chimps are as intelligent as (most :D) people. But intelligence even in humans is multidimensional and in each dimension is spread over a spectrum.

Here is a wiki article about the New Caledonian Crow

[Ray Moscow]

I liked what chimp expert Frans B. M. de Waal said in a recent Dawkin's TV programme: If human behaviour is like Windows, chimp behaviour is like MS DOS. It a bit less sophiscated, but overall it's pretty similar.

(H. scepticus runs Linux, I think.)

[wordy]

Great link.

It would be cool to be able to see the world from their perspective.

I wonder what made them so special. What about our Crows here in Europe. Do they fail using tools?

[Ray Moscow]

I don't think that European or American crows have been observed using tools.

They are quite clever in other ways, though.

This is a good book on corvids: Bird Brains (http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Brains-Intelligence-Ravens-Magpies/dp/0871569566)

[wordy]

I liked what chimp expert Frans B. M. de Waal said in a recent Dawkin's TV programme: If human behaviour is like Windows, chimp behaviour is like MS DOS. It a bit less sophiscated, but overall it's pretty similar.

(H. scepticus runs Linux, I think.)


One thing I hope him and others would take time to study more is the feeling of being unfairly treated. That seems very basic among apes. They hate to get less than somebody lower in rank.

A bit like many of us humans also react. What is lacking is the evidence for an empathy but many of us humans lack such too.

Sometimes when I am at my wild thinking mode I want to start The Empathism Movement.

New Birkbeck research reveals dogs can ‘catch’ human yawns

A new study from researchers in Birkbeck’s School of Psychology has shown that human yawns may be contagious to domestic dogs. The paper, published in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters is the first to demonstrate contagious yawning in dogs, a phenomenon which is thought to relate to the capacity for empathy and has previously been reported in humans and chimpanzees. It is thought that such a contagiousness of yawning may help coordinate interactions and communication between man and his canine friends.

Authors of the paper are Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni, Dr Atsushi Senju, and Dr Alex Shepherd.

Is that really empathy. Could it not just be a reflex from their mirror neurons? :D

[DMB]

The book I cited by de Waal does deal both with reactions to unfairness and ideas about sympathy and empathy.

For example when some monkeys were given fod rewards for doing something, all was OK when they all got slices of cucumber. But when one got given a grape and another a slice of cucumber, the one given the cucumber rejected it and made a fuss. (They prefer grapes to cucumber.)

Empathy is widely observed in non-human species, but this can be interpreted as an emotional reaction that doesn't involve thought. De Waal reckons that it can be construed as sympathy when there is evidence of imagining oneself in the other's place. He cites the case of a female ape (I forget which type) into whose cage a bird fell and injured itself. The ape very gently picked up the bird and carried up to the top of the cage, where it released it, apparently tryng to help it fly.

Another example he cites of ape forethought was an incident in a zoo where bonobos were kept within a moat. From time to time the maintenance personnel drained it to clean it and then refill it. On one occasion, having done the cleaning, they were about to start refilling when an old male, who had seen the procedure many times, rushed up and urgently claimed their attention, drawing them to where they could see that two youngsters had got down into the dry moat and were unable to climb back up.

[wordy]

Yes one hope it is as one read into their behavior.

But realize how almost impossible it is even to figure out if a psychopath have empathy or just a good calculating mind that can fake true empathy so that people love this person who deceive them without feeling any remorse. Cunning but do they feel empathy. they fake it very good.

So if humans are that good at faking. Can not us read into animals things we give human terms us making them more caring then they are.

sure it sounds promising but think of all the apes in captivity that fails to take care of their own babies? If they felt empathy or something like that and understood that they themselves could not or didn't want to invest feelings into to their off spring then they would ask for help from other chimps or gorillas or from humans.

Unless they feel so sorry for it that they want to kill it so it doesn't have to live their life in captivity? Maybe they jsut don't get what has happen but then why not ask others for help?

[DMB]

But wordy, some human parents kill their babies.

[wordy]

You are so right. I obviously have mental blinders that hide such sad facts about us humans. I guess my Blinders even are Rosy to taint it all in a romantic style. Too bad.

So after all they just behave like us. They share something else with us.

A lust for to do revenge even years after a deception.