Chimps Use Superior Memory And Strategy To Beat Humans At Brain Games

The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes may not be as unbelievable as you once thought. In studies matching humans against chimpanzees in brain games have shown that the apes can use superior memory and strategic skill to play a near perfect game.

The brain games worked like this: each player would have two choices. They could either choose to press the left box or right box on a touch screen. One player would be trying to press the same button as his or her opponent, the opponent would be trying to press a different button. The winning team member would receive a prize, either money for the humans or apple cubes for the chimps.

The brain games rules were simple enough. The strategy is to guess the other players future moves based on past behavior, without any other knowledge of the opponent. Like with other competitive games like Poker or Chess, the player is required to establish a strategy.

Humans always played against other humans, and the chimps played the brain games with other chimps. The idea was to see who would develop a winning strategy faster.

Turns out the chimps were simply better at the brain game than their human opponents.

The researchers had some interesting theories about the apes superior memory and strategy, which may also soften the blow to the human ego.

Chimpanzees live in highly competitive hierarchical societies, with many males working to become the alpha of a given group. To thrive in such a society, chimps may have evolved better strategic minds to defeat rivals in a face off.

Humans evolved in a more egalitarian society, where collaborative features like language evolved. Adaptation to these two different worlds may account for the chimp’s skill in the brain games.

It’s still frightening though.

In another experiment conducted in 2007, scientists showcased the amazing memory of a two-year-old Chimpanzee. Similar to the brain games, the apes had to memorize patterns. This time, the patterns were randomized numerical sequences. As this video shows, the chimp could memorize a complex pattern in 200 milliseconds, a feat that we would consider genius. (The experiment is shown in the video below)

Before you start thinking that we will soon be living in a world controlled by apes, it’s important to remember the advantages we hold. Humans have about 20 billion neurons in our central cortex, the seat of cognition, chimps on have 6 billion. Making functions like complex language possible.

Just never use that language to challenge an chimp to any kind of brain game.

[Image: Chimpanzee using tools to open nuts, Credit: Cornelia Schrauf, Josep Call,Koki Fuwa and Satoshi Hirata/Wikimedia]