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Science

The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died (nytimes.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times, written by philosophy professor Lori Gruen: Sarah, who could have been deemed the world's smartest chimp, was brought to the United States from Africa as an infant to work with David and Ann Premack in a series of experiments designed to find out what chimpanzees might think. In order to determine what, if anything, might be on Sarah's mind, she was one of the first chimpanzees to be taught a human language. The Premacks taught her to use plastic magnetic tokens that varied in size and color to represent words. She formed sentences by placing the tokens in a vertical line. Ann Premack noted that her earliest words named "various interesting fruits," so that Sarah "could both solve her problem and eat it."

Sarah's career established that not only do chimpanzees have complex thoughts, but also distinct personalities with strong preferences and prejudices. But this is just part of her remarkable life story. As she grew older she helped a diabetic chimpanzee named Abby, who she was living with, remember to get her medication. She was a loving, yet stern, aunt-like figure to a pair of young chimpanzees, Harper and Emma, and she helped Henry, a male chimpanzee who came from a situation of terrible abuse, get along with other chimpanzees. Since the time that Sarah was thought to have established that chimpanzees know what others might want or need, a growing number of investigators have tried to figure out if other animals have a theory of mind. Though there have always been skeptics, studies have suggested that crows, jays, ravens, other apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, may know what others are thinking. In social animals, being able to glean what others might be thinking is a good strategy for getting along. For chimpanzees living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care.
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The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died More

The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died

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  • Mirror, mirror, on the wall. (Score:3)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday August 10, 2019 @08:45AM (#59073660) Journal

    Mirror neurons may account for that "theory of mind".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Chinese scientists added human brain genes to monkeys ( here [vox.com] ), so, a smarter monkey is likely to live soon. What will they do off it / him / her is another question, once it / he / she says "mammy".

    • Re:Soon, a smarter one (Score:4, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday August 10, 2019 @01:36PM (#59074294)

      once it / he / she says "mammy".

      It is not lack of intelligence that prevents apes from talking, but lack of vocal cords.

      That is why they learn languages based on hand signs or tokens.

      Grey parrots can express the full range of human language phonemes, so they can be taught to interact verbally. Apes cannot.

  • This is all Obama's fault.

  • "The World's Smartest Chimp Has Died"

    Donald Trump Jr died?

  • Smartest or highest educated? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday August 10, 2019 @09:29AM (#59073742) Journal

    Surely she wasn't the smartest chimp alive - the odds that the chimp they selected for study happened to be the smartest in the world is unlikely. However she may have been the most educated and had the greatest skill set of any chimp alive.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nkwe ( 604125 )

      Surely she wasn't the smartest chimp alive - the odds that the chimp they selected for study happened to be the smartest in the world is unlikely. However she may have been the most educated and had the greatest skill set of any chimp alive.

      Greatest skill set as evaluated by humans. Other chimps may not agree. Skills learned / exhibited in captivity may not be relevant to chimps in the wild.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        From the summary it sounds like she was the peace keeper of the group; that's got to be considered a valuable skill or they'd just ignore her.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Seems a strong matriarch keeping peace in the tribe would be valuable in most circumstances.

    • She was the smartest chimp that humans know about. Sure there could be a smarter chimp out there but we can’t know about them if they have’t communicated with humans. In the same sense that there may be a human in the world that has solved P=NP and String Theory but has never published. Until that time these are unsolved problems to humanity.

  • If (Score:2)

    by JustOK ( 667959 )
    If she was so smart, how come she died?

    • i was going to say, if she was so smart, why was she the one that got caught and imprisoned? The smarter chimps are living like Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Jimh, they have libraries and light bulbs and doors in their sprawling caves underground, and reading about Sarah makes them sad....

      • I can only assume it’s like my friend’s cats. One was a stray she adopted as an adult and one that was raised indoors as a kitten. One day my friend accidentally left her front door open. Both her cats darted for the door. But the former stray stoppped at door and it seemed the cat was thinking: “Wait a minute. . . I’ve been out there before. It wasn’t good.” The cat turned around and stayed inside while my friend had to go catch her other cat.

        • Years ago I had two cats. They were both well-fed and cared for.

          I opened the door one time and one cat took off like a shot. I didn't waste one millisecond chasing after him or looking for him- if he didn't like his cushy home and plentiful free food, he was more than welcome to go freeze his ass off and risk being eaten by something bigger and meaner than him.

          I thought I heard him crying outside once a few days later, but I can't be sure because I didn't bother to get up from the couch to see if it was him

          • So it wasn't curiosity but an asshole who killed the cat.

            • So it wasn't curiosity but an asshole who killed the cat.

              No, you didn't kill him, no need to feel guilty about it.

              Perhaps you'd rather he be imprisoned, as the poster below, nukenerd, seems to indicate he would do.

          • Is this an American attitude towards cats? Cats are semi-domesticated animals that like to do feral prowling outside in the dusk and early night, but need sleep from around midnight and during some of the day in a safe sheltered place like in a house. In the UK we have cat flaps in exterior doors to allow them to come and go as they wish, or are prepared to let them in and out ourselves. Even if you don't particularly like them around, they keep down the rats and mice.

            You say your indoor cat had a happ

            • You say your indoor cat had a happy life, but no imprisoned cat is really happy.

              He was happy enough not to dash for the door every time it was opened. He'd go outside but never strayed far. He'd putter around the yard and then come back in after a while. The point is that he could have run off but he didn't.

              He wasn't imprisoned, he liked where he was at and had the sense to know it.

              The other one? He didn't want to stay and I didn't make him, simple as that. If he'd come back and hung around he could have, but it was his choice not to come back. So be it.

              • We couldn't have cat flaps because critters like squirrels and raccoons will happily come right in through them, shit all over the place and chew up the house.

                The day you find a pissed off raccoon hiding under your bed is the day you'll decide that installing a cat flap was a bad idea.

      • i was going to say, if she was so smart, why was she the one that got caught and imprisoned?

        Because she was an infant.

        The normal way that chimps are captured is that a poacher shoots the mother and then grabs the baby.

        • Oh gosh thats terrible, so thank you for jarring me from my flippant attempt at humour. Thats probably true, and really quite sad. Im such a bitch on this site, its my steam valve. Sometimes Im a little inappropriate.

    • she's actually living it up in Elvis' secret underground beach lair with such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Steven Hawking and Abe Vigoda.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        But Elvis went home! I saw him on the flying saucer. He was sitting next to bigfoot.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Geez, do you even read the Weekly World News? Elvis tragically died in a car crash in the 90s. It was on the front page!

    • If she was so smart, how come she died?

      Well, many humans are / have been smart, smarter than the chimp, and are / were caught, imprisoned and died.

  • I wonder if they ever did this [youtube.com] to it...

  • "For chimpanzees living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care."

    Any objections to modifying that to:

    "For hominids living in sanctuaries, it can facilitate care."

    Asking for the, ah, permanent record. Please provide your justification as well.

  • Regularly communicated in 3 word sentences.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    They did this by raising Washoe in sensible household environment rather than a sterile lab. Which greatly upset the behavioralists.

  • ...Donald Trump move one position closer to being the smartest person on the planet.

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