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Chimp Defeats Human Memory Champ

primates.com

Careful what you say in the monkey house, people—chimps apparently don’t easily forget.

Maybe it’s time to stop feeling so smug about our vaunted position on the evolutionary chart. Turns out that we, the self-declared smartypants species of the animal kingdom, have been outstripped by one of our simian cousins, the chimpanzee, when it comes to a particular test of memorization skills.

Daily Mail:

Both chimp and man watched a computer screen on which five numbers flashed up at various positions before being obscured by white squares.

They then had to touch the squares in order of the numbers they concealed, from lowest to highest. When the numbers were shown for just a fifth of a second - the blink of an eye - Ayumu got it right almost 90 per cent of the time.

His human opponent scored a rather less impressive 33 per cent, Channel Five programme Extraordinary Animals will reveal.

Mr. Pridmore [British memory champion Ben Pridmore], who spends his evenings memorising 400-digit numbers, ruefully acknowledged that he had met his match.
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By DennisD, January 26, 2008 at 9:08 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Does this mean Guiliani really could make a come back.

I heard he received a big increase in campaign contributions once this article came out. This is just the type of story Rove would plant to keep the machine rolling.

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By Louise, January 26, 2008 at 7:45 pm #

OK, that proves it!

Bush is NOT the missing link!

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By Hammo, January 26, 2008 at 7:14 pm #

And we are probably not as intelligent as some other species, such as dolphins, in some ways either.

Food for thought in the article ...

Navy dolphins may be deployed: Did secret ESP research involve them?

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=20708

- - -

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By ramblnrose, January 26, 2008 at 7:02 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I didn’t elect Bush. First time the supreme court elected Bush. Second time electonic voting elected Bush.

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By Thomas Billis, January 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm #

There was another less publicized test that they did only in America.They showed the chimps a picture of George Bush and the chimps to a monkey shit on the picture.We elected him President.If we only had monkey brains.

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By Dr. Knowitall, PhD, PhD, January 26, 2008 at 6:07 pm #

This isn’t surprising at all. All the chimp has to do all day is eat bananas, make faces, swing around and take memory tests. Also, try to make himself scarce when scientists come around to recruit him for experiments.

But humans? We have to live with the knowledge that Bush is the leader of the free world. How the hell can a person have that fact stuffed into his head and still have room for memory?

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By minamoto no taira, January 26, 2008 at 2:52 pm #

Stop imitating Bush? It makes the chimp race look so bad.

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By kdnc, January 26, 2008 at 2:47 pm #

This is not a memory test. Any first year neuropsychologist will be happy to explain the difference between this test and a memory test.

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By weather, January 26, 2008 at 1:12 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

As flawed as we are, its our ‘fuzzy logic’, not calculus that redeems us.

As cool as calculus is, it is emotional intelligence, passion, Love and art that are universal algorithms.
We saw an epidemic of it break out in Renaissance Italy and guess what, you can’t buy it on Ebay.

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By jatihoon, January 26, 2008 at 11:20 am #

SO DID BUSH

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By Douglas Chalmers, January 26, 2008 at 6:33 am #

“Maybe it’s time to stop feeling so smug about our vaunted position on the evolutionary chart….”

Really sad that Truthdig has once again demonstrated its shallow concupiscence in avoiding the significant and urgent for the irrelevant and irrational.

This is last December’s news reheated for no other reason than it is Saturday, uhh. Scheer’s “I’m the chimpion!’ can be seen at yet another ratshit blog which is waaaaayyy ahead in news terms http://www.publiuspundit.com/2007/12/think_you_know_whos_human_thin.php

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Chimp Defeats Human Memory Champ

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