Druidus
Keeper of the Grove
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1327942004
Young apes 'brighter than human children'
GORDON CAIRNS
Key points
Young apes smarter than human kids, scientists claim
Nursery children come off worse in comparison tests
Many Scottish teachers would probably agree with findings
Key quote
"The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale." - Dr Victoria Horner
Story in full YOUNG apes are smarter than their human cousins, scientists have claimed. A team from the University of St Andrews discovered that chimpanzees acted more intelligently and were better at problem-solving than pre-school children.
Rather than mimicking adults, the scientists found that young chimps are better at working things out for themselves than children, who will simply copy the actions of their elders.
Dr Victoria Horner and Professor Andrew Whiten studied groups of orphaned chimpanzees in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda, to see how they would adapt to being released to the wild.
The team then conducted the same experiments with pre-school children from local nurseries in St Andrews, for comparison.
The St Andrews primatologists looked at what the chimps did when Dr Horner showed them how to get food out of a box using a stick. She then repeated the experiment with a see-through box.
The chimps copied the doctor when they could not see what was inside the box, but when they saw there was a false ceiling inside the clear box blocking the stick getting to the food, they did not bother stabbing the stick into the box.
When the scientists did the same experiment with Scottish toddlers, they were surprised to learn that the chimps acted in a more intelligent way than the children. In contrast to the chimpanzees, they typically copied all the actions, including the irrelevant ones performed on the transparent box.
Dr Horner said: "They were not just doing this to please me because they would do this even if I left the room and they thought they were not being watched."
Professor Whiten said he suspected that this simply highlights what a cultural species humans are. He said: "The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale.
"It looks as if, at the age of three to four years old in particular, they operate a kind of rule of thumb, that if an adult is doing something that has a useful outcome, then its a good idea to copy all they do, even if some of it doesnt, on the face of it, make too much sense.
"Chimpanzees, at least in the kind of task we set them, may be more discriminating."
But he also suggested there could be an explanation that saves the self-respect of humans. He added: "One alternative is that the children are actually more tuned into the psychology of the individual they are watching and assume that someone repeating an action like this really intends it, so its worth copying".
Dr Horner said: "This tells us several important things about how the chimpanzee mind is working in this kind of social learning situation, which is probably very important to youngsters observing their mothers using tools in the wild.
"Most importantly, it suggests that apes like these do not merely ape in a mindless way, but rather more rationally, imitating selectively on the basis of a certain level of understanding of which events can and cant plausibly cause others.
"Thats quite sophisticated."
The Sanctuary occupies a 100-acre island in Lake Victoria and is home to dozens of young chimpanzees, orphaned mainly because their mothers were victims of the current popularity of bushmeat in Africa.
The study has been published online in the science journal Animal Cognition.
Young apes 'brighter than human children'
GORDON CAIRNS
Key points
Young apes smarter than human kids, scientists claim
Nursery children come off worse in comparison tests
Many Scottish teachers would probably agree with findings
Key quote
"The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale." - Dr Victoria Horner
Story in full YOUNG apes are smarter than their human cousins, scientists have claimed. A team from the University of St Andrews discovered that chimpanzees acted more intelligently and were better at problem-solving than pre-school children.
Rather than mimicking adults, the scientists found that young chimps are better at working things out for themselves than children, who will simply copy the actions of their elders.
Dr Victoria Horner and Professor Andrew Whiten studied groups of orphaned chimpanzees in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda, to see how they would adapt to being released to the wild.
The team then conducted the same experiments with pre-school children from local nurseries in St Andrews, for comparison.
The St Andrews primatologists looked at what the chimps did when Dr Horner showed them how to get food out of a box using a stick. She then repeated the experiment with a see-through box.
The chimps copied the doctor when they could not see what was inside the box, but when they saw there was a false ceiling inside the clear box blocking the stick getting to the food, they did not bother stabbing the stick into the box.
When the scientists did the same experiment with Scottish toddlers, they were surprised to learn that the chimps acted in a more intelligent way than the children. In contrast to the chimpanzees, they typically copied all the actions, including the irrelevant ones performed on the transparent box.
Dr Horner said: "They were not just doing this to please me because they would do this even if I left the room and they thought they were not being watched."
Professor Whiten said he suspected that this simply highlights what a cultural species humans are. He said: "The chimpanzees are demonstrating an adaptive ability to pick up aspects of ape-level material culture like simple tool use, but children need to acquire culture on a vastly greater scale.
"It looks as if, at the age of three to four years old in particular, they operate a kind of rule of thumb, that if an adult is doing something that has a useful outcome, then its a good idea to copy all they do, even if some of it doesnt, on the face of it, make too much sense.
"Chimpanzees, at least in the kind of task we set them, may be more discriminating."
But he also suggested there could be an explanation that saves the self-respect of humans. He added: "One alternative is that the children are actually more tuned into the psychology of the individual they are watching and assume that someone repeating an action like this really intends it, so its worth copying".
Dr Horner said: "This tells us several important things about how the chimpanzee mind is working in this kind of social learning situation, which is probably very important to youngsters observing their mothers using tools in the wild.
"Most importantly, it suggests that apes like these do not merely ape in a mindless way, but rather more rationally, imitating selectively on the basis of a certain level of understanding of which events can and cant plausibly cause others.
"Thats quite sophisticated."
The Sanctuary occupies a 100-acre island in Lake Victoria and is home to dozens of young chimpanzees, orphaned mainly because their mothers were victims of the current popularity of bushmeat in Africa.
The study has been published online in the science journal Animal Cognition.
