That’s pretty much it. I searched, but I didn’t find anything that addressed my exact question.
It’s frequently said that chimps have the intelligence of a 3 year old human. But some 3 year olds are smarter than others, just like some animals are smarter than others of the same species. So why haven’t we come across a chimp with the intelligence of a 10 year old? Like…still pretty dumb, but able to fully use and comprehend written language. Is it likely that this “Hawking chimp” has already existed, but since we don’t put forth much effort educating (most) apes we just haven’t noticed? Or is there something else going on, maybe some genetic barrier preventing them from ever truly achieving sapience? I’m not expecting an ape to write an essay on Tolstoy, but it seems like as smart as we know these animals to be we should’ve found one that could read and comprehend, for instance, The Hungry Caterpillar as written in plain english.
In: Biology
I think it is about its construction. I think brains as computers. It could be similiar in power but without having the spesific hardware or softwares it won’t do what the other one does.
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Well, there’s some disagreement, but some people like Chomsky think that using language- as in formulating sentences according to rules, not just individual words- is a matter of the specific way human brains are set up, not just more raw intelligence.
The average 3 year old line is a useful comparison, but you’re taking it too literally. It’s like when someone is pregnant and they say the fetus is the size of X fruit at each stage – that doesn’t mean it’s exactly that sized, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s literally that fruit.
In short while it’s a useful laymans comparison – chimps simply don’t have the same level of potential capability as a human. There is a ceiling there which is much lower than humans. So while a human 3 year old can be very bright and act more like a 4 or 5 year old, chimps hit their ceiling long before that.
The human brain goes through some quite interesting milestones as it develops. To start off with it’s basically identical to a mid-range animal brain – hence why babies are dumb as shit. Towards about age 4, it first develops an ability called Theory of Mind, which is a set of skills that allow it to understand that other creatures perceive the world differently to itself. This can be demonstrated quite well by [tests](https://youtu.be/YGSj2zY2OEM). Here, the child named Alfie is demonstrating theory of mind when he says that he thinks his mother will think the sun is a lion. A younger child would think that its mother would know it was a sun, because they do not have the theory of mind necessary to know that other people do not know the same things they know. Many animals don’t have a complete theory of mind. Chimpanzees, however, [do](https://youtu.be/BmISd0v7AdM), which is a big part of why some people say they’re about as smart as a 3-4 year old.
Theory of mind isn’t a continuous effort though. For a long time, children have absolutely none of it, then over quite a short period of time, they gain the entire thing all at once. This is how developmental milestones all behave in humans, and these milestones have specific brain structures that cause them. So you have milestones like the ability to use symbols and the ability to do abstract thought, and those are steps rather than slopes as well. These steps act as basically caps on development. An animal that doesn’t have the brain structures necessary for abstract thought will never gain them. You’ll still have a range of intelligence within the species, but none will be able to overcome milestones they lack the structures for, so the smartest… salmon lets say, will never be smarter than a 3 year old because it won’t develop a complete theory of mind.
These steps aren’t strictly ordered though. There’s nothing in particular stopping an animal from having two milestones but missing the one that comes inbetween in humans. That does make it harder to compare to humans though. If an animal can do something an 11 year old human can do but can’t do something a 3 year old human can do, what’s the point of comparison for that?
The other major difference between human brains and the brains of other animals is that we dedicate a *huge* amount of our brain power to language. This is the [cognitive tradeoff theory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktkjUjcZid0), the idea that language was such a huge advantage to us that our brains sacrificed cognitive power in other departments for the sake of becoming even better at communicating. This would mean though that even if all other aspects were the same, humans and chimpanzees would still have intelligences you can’t directly compare, because it’s kind of like comparing a submarine to an aeroplane – both have similar aspects like being made out of metal, but they’re designed to do very different jobs. A plane would suck at diving and a submarine would suck at flying, but that’s not a very useful comparison to make.
Edit: I woke up to 159 notifications because of this post.
Part of the basis to this question has more to do with the way study results get twisted in reporting and the way intelligence testing is flawed in the first place than anything else.
Intelligence testing, particularly early childhood intelligence testing are based on estimations through the observation of specific skills appropriate for an age group within a given society.
A toddler’s limiting factor on language skills is experience, a chimp’s may be total ability, observers from the outside see the same level of evidence of mastery, but the internal process can be quite different and difficult to judge.
Apes would likely do much better if we had standardized IQ tests based on something they actually had use for in daily life, but they would still not surpass adults on anything where reasoning can beat dexterity.
Dogs beat chimps in some of the more human centric tests because they have better skill at reading the human intention in some situations and natural abilities that make some of the tests easier.
This gets further muddied by the reporting that takes a paper that says something like “ape trained in sign language for 12 years now has language recognition scores approximately equivalent to the average intelligence 3yr old” and says ‘ape as smart as 3yr old’
The other thing that at least used to be true was that most of the tests from 0-3 involved very little problem solving, so any animal that could be trained to recognize things could score reasonably well, after three many of the common tests started to introduce reasoning which most animals have limited capacity for compared to humans unless it is something that the animal has an evolutionary reason to be concerned with.
At the end of the day, while interesting, the results of giving human IQ tests to non-humans is rather apples and oranges and since most animals have no interest or need for most of the skills we measure they will always score in the range of early childhood development.
In all likelihood larger primates are smarter than a 3yr old, we just aren’t giving them a fair test, but the scale on a fair test for other primates would be different and diverge into it’s own direction away from the human measures as it moves up the scale.
Are truly exceptional three year olds as smart as the average adult?
You should check out the book Humankind by Rutger Bregman.
He’s got a whole section about the evolution of humans and why we are more emotionally intelligent than the chimpanzee, and then goes onto explain how our cultural ancestry is more closely related to that of the bonobo.
He makes the really compelling argument that we’ve been looking at our evolution wrong.
It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s *survival of the friendliest*
We evolved to work together as a team, learning from one another, mirroring one another, and it’s often the most friendliest of us that gets to reproduce (you don’t learn dad jokes when you become a dad, you become a dad because you make dad jokes and she thought you were cute and fun to be with)
It’s a great read either way and has given me the hope that I needed for humanity. That in spite of what our television and media has been telling us, that alone won’t stop our genetic growth towards being a kinder and gentler species.
I read a funny and sad comment at the same time. There was a question that went something like “why is there a problem to design a proper trash can” in one of the public wilderness parks. And the response from the forest ranger was that there is a significant overlap from the dumbest people and smartest bears. If that makes sense? English is not my first language so it might have been worded differently
One reason is that human brains and chimp brains don’t work the same way, they each have evolved to adapt to their environment and needs. Human brains are built to develop language and abstraction, whereas chimp brains are better adapted to agility and other chimpy things.
What this leads to is that chimps can easily get *really good* at simple tasks, but it would take a particularly special chimp to get anywhere near being able to read.
On the other hand, humans need a lot of practise for even simple stuff like walking, but we’re able to go much deeper and form much more complex models in our minds, which is why we can read and write, do mathematics, design machines, etc…
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