Astounding Facts About Primates that Never Cease to Amaze
8. Monkeys are the smartest of all land animals.
When we think about human intelligence, we are really thinking about something beyond the instinctual drive to behave in a certain way in given circumstances, such as searching for food when we are hungry. We are thinking about more complex behaviors, such as using language to communicate or using tools to accomplish a task. When we think about “smart” people, we think about people who are proficient in not just one area but many, someone who aces all subjects in school rather than someone who can only do math. And here’s the funny thing about human intelligence: it is not all that human. Many animals possess traits belonging to what we think of as human intelligence, and none more so than monkeys.
Researchers who designed an IQ test for monkeys to determine if they have a “general intelligence factor” were surprised to find that some do. Some monkeys did consistently well on a variety of tests, while others did consistently poorly. Additionally, many primates can use tools and have even shown that they can communicate with language; the famed researcher Jane Goodall spoke to a gorilla named Koko in sign language. In fact, monkeys are the smartest of all land animals! You may be tempted to think that they are dunces who throw poop at people that they do not like, but they may be capable of much more complex thought than we realize.
When we think about human intelligence, we are really thinking about something beyond the instinctual drive to behave in a certain way in given circumstances, such as searching for food when we are hungry. We are thinking about more complex behaviors, such as using language to communicate or using tools to accomplish a task. When we think about “smart” people, we think about people who are proficient in not just one area but many, someone who aces all subjects in school rather than someone who can only do math. And here’s the funny thing about human intelligence: it is not all that human. Many animals possess traits belonging to what we think of as human intelligence, and none more so than monkeys.
Researchers who designed an IQ test for monkeys to determine if they have a “general intelligence factor” were surprised to find that some do. Some monkeys did consistently well on a variety of tests, while others did consistently poorly. Additionally, many primates can use tools and have even shown that they can communicate with language; the famed researcher Jane Goodall spoke to a gorilla named Koko in sign language. In fact, monkeys are the smartest of all land animals! You may be tempted to think that they are dunces who throw poop at people that they do not like, but they may be capable of much more complex thought than we realize.
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13 September 2022
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