黑猩猩的记忆力远胜于人类?

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Tetsuro Matsuzawa: In a chimpanzee's mind, their intelligence is so flexible.

You're listening to Tetsuro Matsuzawa of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, in Japan. Matsuzawa trained chimps to recognize the numbers one to nine. He found that they outperformed college undergrads in a short-term memory test.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa: I tested three young chimpanzees at the age of five.

Random numbers appeared on a touchscreen. After a fraction of a second, the numbers were masked by white squares. The chimps remembered the location of the numbers, and were able to touch them in numerical order.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa: And I did tests of up to eight numerals. And young chimpanzees had no problem at all. But if you test undergraduate students in a college, five numerals are already very difficult.

The undergrads accuracy dropped to 40 percent. Matsuzawa said that learning about the chimpanzee mind can tell us something about ourselves.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa: You can easily recognize similarity between us. So humans, animals, we should be living together peacefully co-existing, sharing this beautiful planet Earth.

Our thanks today to Tetsuro Matsuaza, I'm Jorge Salazar for ES, a clear voice for science. We're at ES.org

【背景介绍】

    如果问你一个问题：“人比猩猩聪明吗？”大多数人的回答一定是“当然”。长久以来，人类一直认为自己是灵长类动物中最具智慧的。但日本京都大学最新研究发现，年轻黑猩猩记忆力出众，远远胜于成年人类。

    研究人员将三组黑猩猩——三只母猩猩及其幼崽与9名大学生进行对比研究。研究小组以三种不同的时间间隔将1至9的阿拉伯数字呈现在电脑屏幕上，然后以方框替代这些数字，要求受试标出数字显示的正确顺序。

    研究发现，年轻黑猩猩在记忆速度及准确性方面超过大学生。专家解释：这种表现说明人类在进化过程中需要获取其它一些技能，从而导致某些能力退化。毕竟脑容量是有限的。