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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