A movie clip, part of a study in 2007, impressively captures the eidetic memory of a 2-year old chimp as he played a memory masking game. Their exceptional working memory may be a key factor for chimps’ strategic skills. In other words, chimps seem to have some sort of a knack when fighting peers in a face-off. Since the game is a test of how much the players recall of their opponent’s choice history, and how cleverly they maneuver by following choice patterns, the results suggest that chimps may have a superior memory and strategy, which help them perform better in a competition, than humans. Whereas, when humans played, their choices drifted farther off from theoretical predictions. In Camerer’s experiment, it turned out that chimps played a near-ideal game, as their choices leaned closer to game theory equilibrium. When the players are each making the most strategic choices, the game hovers around what is called an ‘equilibrium’ state. Using a set of math equations, described by game theory, it is easy to predict this pattern on paper. An ideal game, eventually, develops a certain pattern. In competitive games such as this, like in chess or poker, the players learn to guess their opponent’s moves based on the latter’s past choices, and adjust their own strategy at every step in order to win. The opponent’s choice was displayed after every selection, and payoffs in the form of apple cubes or money were dispensed to the winner. Player A, for instance, won, each time their choices matched, and player B won, if their choices did not. Each player simply had to choose between left and right squares on a touch-screen panel, while being blind to their rival’s choice. In the present study, chimp pairs or human pairs contested in a two-player video game. So the question arises whether competitive behavior is hard-wired in them. Chimps are aggressive and status-hungry within their hierarchical societies, knit around a dominant alpha male. Our behavior and personalities, molded to some extent by our distinct societies, are strikingly different from that of our fellow primates. Yet at some point, we evolved differently. Chimp and human DNAs overlap by a whopping 99 percent, which makes us closer to chimps than horses to zebras. In a recent study by psychologists Colin Camerer and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, chimps and humans played a strategy game – and unexpectedly, the chimps outplayed the humans.Ĭhimps are a scientist’s favorite model to understand human brain and behavior. What happens when, for just once, a chimp or a dog challenges man to one of their feats? Well, for one, a precarious face-off – like the one Matt Reeves conceived in the Planet of the Apes – would seem a tad less unlikely than we thought. But that’s not the upsetting realization. Sniffer dogs can detect the first signs of colon cancer by the scents of patients, while doctors flounder in early diagnosis. Animals also have a unique sense perception. Sea lions and elephants can remember faces from decades ago. Unlike an average human brain that can barely recall a vivid scene from the last hour, chimps have a photographic memory and can memorize patterns they see in the blink of an eye. Scientists have shown, time and again, that many animals have an extraordinary intellect. But what is smart? Is it just about having ideas, or being good at language and math? We amuse at a dog playing ball, a dolphin jumping rings, or a monkey imitating man because we think of these as remarkable acts for animals that, we presume, aren’t smart as us. We are the geniuses, the philosophers, the artists, the poets and savants. In a world with over 8.7 million species, only we have the ability to understand the inner workings of our body while also unraveling the mysteries of the universe. We humans assume we are the smartest of all creations.
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