The intelligence of Chimpanzees - Hanya Awan

As many people do not know, animals evolve over time and many species derive from the same family. Such as rats and guinea pigs, as well as hamsters. Animals may or may not share similar features and senses. For example, cats and leopards have night vision that is not capable of the human eye. There are smart humans and smart animals who have high IQs. However, there are animals who have such a high IQ that it even defeats human intelligence or does concern them with what these animals are capable of. The smartest animals include crows, pigs, octopi, African grey parrots, elephants, and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are so smart that they are considered one of the smartest animals on Earth, if not, the smartest. Like humans, they share similar skills, such as being able to communicate in languages and sign language. Several tests have found that chimpanzees have acquired a real understanding of words as abstract concepts that can be used in novel contexts as a result of recent language training. Not only are chimpanzees highly capable of understanding certain words and concepts to communicate, but they also use facial expressions, hand gestures and a large amount of vocalization which includes sounds that come from screams, hoots, grunts, and roars.

Chimpanzee methods of living and survival techniques have been fascinated by many scientists, and their intelligence benefited scientists. In fact, chimpanzees have been a great example for psychological, medical and biological experiments which include them using their intelligence, responsiveness, and exuberance. Scientists and researchers have discovered that chimpanzees use certain tools for different activities. A chimpanzee in the Congo basin, for instance, digs up termite mounds first with a stout stick and then fishes for individual termites with a long, slender wand. There have also been circumstances where their intelligence involved them using a combination of equipment or tools. This is proven as chimpanzees from the Guinea region push leafy sponges into hollow trees containing water and then withdraw the wet sponges using many sticks. Another factor contributing to having fascinating features and characteristics is the fact that they are much stronger than humans. Despite chimpanzees being much shorter than humans by height (their height ranges from 3 feet (0.91 m) and 3 inches (ca. 8 cm) to 5 feet (1.52 m) 6 inches (ca. 15 cm), they are1.35 times much stronger than humans as scientists discovered they have more fast-twitch muscle fibres. Scientists have explained that these fast-twitch muscle fibres allow them to perform better in their activities, such as jumping, pulling and have led to higher amounts of strength as well as beneficial for health. In addition to using a variety of tools to gather their food, chimpanzees are one of the few animals on earth to use a wide variety of tools while searching for their food source and to ensure their survival. These tools and techniques are unique and distinct from other animals such as: holding rocks as a hammer to open nuts, stripping leaves off twigs to gather termites from inside termite mounds and crushing leaves to use as sponges for cleaning themselves, according to ADW. Many scientists do not know why they are the smartest animal, but many researchers believe that it is related to the DNA match with humans. Researchers believe that humans that are born with more underdeveloped brains than chimpanzees can correlate to how we tend to become more helpless, but humans rely on the outside world to increase their intelligence and skills, which is a similar concept to when newborn chimpanzees see the world and let the outside world, play a major role in maturing the species.

Bibliography

1.

Chimpanzee - Intelligence [Internet]. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/animal/chimpanzee/Intelligence

2.

April 2021 PP-SW 07. Chimpanzees: Intelligent, social and violent [Internet]. livescience.com. Available from: https://www.livescience.com/chimpanzee-facts.html

3.

Humans can out learn chimps thanks to more flexible brain genetics [Internet]. www.science.org. Available from: https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-can-outlearn-chimps-thanks-more-flexible-brain-genetics#:~:text=The%20neocortex%E2%80%94the%20outermost%20layer