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Friday, December 2, 2011

Animals Chimps Have Better Short-Term Memory

Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:05 AM

Impressive!

Once again we see what the human truly is: the retarded mammal. We are slow at running, slow at growing, and it appears we have a slow working memory. But all of our greatest achievements have their roots in this retardedness. Speed turns out to be less of an advantage than what results from slowness: endurance.

Comments (7) RSS

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The most interesting part of this video to me is what looks to be the vicious brawl occurring immediately before the experiment.

Posted by kpthot on December 2, 2011 at 8:18 AM

But all our greatest achievements have their roots in this retardedness.

Someday that should be carved in granite...

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on December 2, 2011 at 8:18 AM

On the other hand, I don't see a whole lot of Pans inventing flush toilets, shoes, AR-15s, building cities, and keeping Homos as pets.

Posted by The Max on December 2, 2011 at 8:26 AM

The chimp is good at this task because he's been practicing it for years. Subsequent research shows that humans do just as well with sufficient practice.

Posted by seandr on December 2, 2011 at 8:30 AM

Endurance is, indeed, super beneficial. Have you seen persistence hunters? They don't run fast they just run for so long that their prey collapse with exhaustion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE…
I love me some David Attenborough

Posted by moosefan on December 2, 2011 at 8:51 AM

Let that chimp smoke as much dope as I have and then see how his short term memory works.

Posted by PaulBarwick on December 2, 2011 at 9:48 AM

Humans compensated for internal memory by creating external memes. The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux are the oldest known shopping list. Endurance has transitioned from genetic to pictoral to textual to (the assumption of) digital. And that monkey goes by the name of Caesar when he's scoring 4ways down on Harvey, he has no Olympic future.

Posted by bedipped on December 2, 2011 at 10:19 AM