Human intellect has an ancient history, ‘courtesy monkeys’
Human intellect has an ancient history, ‘courtesy monkeys’ New York, Jun 17 (PTI) A new study has suggested that human intellect has a very ancient history—after scientists found that individual monkeys perform consistently on numerous different tests of intelligence. A team at the Harvard University, led by Indian-origin scientist Konika Banerjee, has found that some traces of human intelligence such as a sense of numbers, or the ability to use tools, lurk in primates, the ‘New Scientist’ reported. "We were essentially looking for evidence of a general intelligence factor—something that would be an evolutionary homologue of what we see in humans," Banerjee said. Working with 22 cotton-top tamarins, the scientists tested all the monkeys on a wide range of cognitive tasks, 11 in total. "What we did here was, very crudely, create a monkey IQ test," Banerjee said. In most tasks, the monkeys ended up in clear-cut groupings—above average, average, and below average. For instance, in one test, animals had to reach around a plastic barrier to obtain a raisin placed right in front of them, but behind the barrier. The smartest quickly figured out the trick, another group went straight for the raisin before realising a reach-around was needed. PTI
