E-Paper
Animal geniuses also exist
A series of tests examining intelligence in chimps have found that some apes are much smarter than others.
A series of tests examining intelligence in chimps have found that some apes are much smarter than others.
One chimp in particular, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, who scored far better than other chimps was classified as being “exceptional.”
The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, Discovery News reported.
Natasha’s keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.
“The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional,” wrote study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For example, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn't see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.
