According to a new study, chimpanzees have better memory than humans.
During the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Thursday, a Japanese scientist presented a video of a chimpanzee named Ayumu, which revealed that chimpanzees have a better memory than humans.
In the video, the numbers 1 to 9 randomly appeared onscreen and disappeared. Ayumu was able to tell the exact location and sequence of the numbers. The chimp has also learnt to count from one to nineteen and is able to touch them in ascending and descending order, scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a researcher at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, told Livescience.
As the video was shown, people in the audience were amazed. Matsuzawa explained that what Ayumu had just done was practically impossible for a human to perform. Of course, there are a few exceptions but they are usually people with savant syndrome, which is accompanied by severe mental disabilities.
Matsuzawa also said that six out of the six chimpanzees who were part of this breakthrough study could tell the exact location and sequence of the numbers from one to nine. The report of these findings states that this short-term or working memory of chimpanzees allows them to survive in the wild where they have to make complex decisions in an instant.
"For chimps, the amazing working memory likely helps the animals navigate the branches of huge trees to feed, for example, or decide what to do when competing groups of animals are threatening one another," he said.
