Chimps knocked off top of the IQ tree

The Times ^ | 4/15/2007 | Jonathan Leake and Roger Dobson

[highlander_UW]

Pretty good one.

[Elsie]

I have it on good authority that the chimps think Orangs are nappy headed!

[Elsie]

Yeah...

I have a comment:

WHAT?

[Daffynition]

I hate to be the one to break it to ya' but Chimps Are More Evolved Than Humans

[bruinbirdman]

"Years ago Clint Eastwood knew that Orangs were at the top of the IQ scale, perhaps higher than humans. I mean Clyde helped Clint memorize his lines! ( Film: Every Which Way But Loose, 1978)"

At 4, Bernas is not the computer wizard his mom is, but he is learning. Just the other day he used his lips and feet to play a game on the touch-screen monitor as his mom, Madu, swung from vines and climbed trees.

Madu, a Sumatran orangutan at Zoo Atlanta, shows off his cognitive
skills in a touch-screen computer game.

The two Sumatran orangutans are part of new Zoo Atlanta research that uses computer games to study the cognitive skills of the primates.

The best part? Visitors to the US zoo get to watch their every computer move.

The orangutans play the games on a touch screen built into a tree-like structure in the habitat to blend in with their environment. Visitors watch from a monitor in front of the orangutan exhibit.

Zoo officials hope opening the interactive research to the public will raise awareness of the world's rapidly diminishing orangutan population, which is on track to disappear completely in the next decade.

"The more we understand about orangutan's cognitive processes, the more we'll understand about what they need to survive in the wild," said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo.

In one game, orangutans choose identical photographs or match orangutan sounds with photos of the animals. Correct answers mean food pellets.

There also is a painting game where they can draw pictures by moving their hands and other body parts around the screen. Printouts of their masterpieces are on display in the zoo.

The computer games test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Atlanta's Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

Volunteers from IBM worked nearly 500 hours developing the games, tweaking until the activities were challenging enough for the orangutans.

The data will help researchers learn about orangutans' socialising patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behaviour from scratch through trial and error, said Elliott Albers with the Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, a consortium of researchers at seven universities in the Atlanta area .

In the end, researchers hope the data can point to new conservation strategies so that the 37,000 orangutans living in the wild on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra do not continue to die off.

Just two other US zoos - the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago - are conducting similar research, but only the National Zoo and Zoo Atlanta allow visitors to watch, Stoinski said.
--------------------------------------------------------------

yitbos

[Silly]

Where do they fall on the Bell Curve?

[SunkenCiv]

Orangutans and human origins
Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz
Department of Anthropology
University of Pittsburgh

Humans have a larger number of features that are uniquely shared with orangutans than with any other living ape. Schwartz (1984) proposed that humans are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees - a model that contradicts the greater genetic similarity of base pair sequences in humans and chimpanzees.

The view presented here is that genetic similarity of base pair sequences is not a necessary measure of phylogenetic relationship and that morphology continues to exist as an independently reliable source of information on evolutionary relationships. The orangutan model presents a conundrum for biological systematics over how to chose between morphological and genetic evidence when they are in conflict.

Higher Primates May Have Asian Root
by B. Bower
Science News
October 16, 1999

Researchers working in southern Asia have discovered 40-million-year-old fossil teeth and jaw fragments that, in their view, support the controversial notion that anthropoids originated in Asia. The find in Myanmar represents a new species, Bahinia pondaungensis, in the anthropoid group, which includes monkeys, apes, and humans, reports a team led by anthropologist Jean-Jacques Jaeger of UniversitÈ Montpellier-II in France. The teeth show key similarities to those of Eosimias, a 45-million-year-old fossil creature from China that may also have been an early anthropoid (SN: 11/11/95, p. 309)... Jaeger and his coworkers view their new find as evidence for a much earlier origin of anthropoids in Asia, perhaps 55 million to 60 million years ago. In November 1998, the researchers recovered two fragmentary upper jaws and a broken lower jaw, each retaining a number of teeth, belonging to Bahinia. The same excavation level yielded the lower jaw of a previously identified species known as Amphipithecus. Jaegerís group views Amphipithecus as a more anatomically advanced anthropoid that lived at the same time as Bahinia.

The Scars of Evolution
by Elaine Morgan

"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"

[SunkenCiv]

the only keyword?

KEYWORDS: whataboutpelosi; Click to Add Keyword

[SunkenCiv]

Blam, this should be of interest to you. But at the first sign of bloodbath, I'm outta here...

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[wai-ming]

So gorillas didn't make the cut.

They're not going to be too happy about that.

[wai-ming]

So gorillas didn't make the cut.

They're not going to be too happy about that.

[atomic conspiracy]

Ok, if these guys are so smart, why are they stuck in the Borneo jungle?
Can’t they get tech support jobs in India or at least fly to Mexico and sneak over the border?

[Redcloak]

Non-human primates in order of intelligence

1 Orange-utan

2 Chimpanzee

3 Spider monkey

4 Langur

5 Macaque [don't say it in public]

6 Mandrill

7 Guenon

8 Mangabey

9 Capuchin

10 Gibbon

11 Baboon

12 Woolly monkey

13 Janet Reno

14 Rosie O'Donnell

15 Michael Moore (Though, there's some doubt as to his order)

16 a bag of rocks

17 parsley

18 Nancy Pelosi 

[bruinbirdman]

"18 Nancy Pelosi "

19 Harry "The Traitor" Reid

yitbos

[Silly]

Excellent. I bet he works for next to nothing, too.

[FreedomCalls]

Non-human primates in order of intelligence 1 Orange-utan 2 Chimpanzee 3 Spider monkey 4 Langur 5 Macaque [don't say it in public] 6 Mandrill 7 Guenon 8 Mangabey 9 Capuchin 10 Gibbon 11 Baboon 12 Woolly monkey

Gorillas? Where are gorillas? You can't tell me that gorillas are lower than baboons and wolly monkeys.

[Vicomte13]

Why would a guy name his chimp BJ?

[DungeonMaster]

I hate the primates.

[MortMan]

I had to look twice and I couldn’t see the word >democrat< on the list. You would think it should be near the top.

Sorry, but this list is of the most intelligent non-human primates! ;-P

[bert]

right turn Clyde...