If a chimp of average intelligence is about as intelligent as your average 3 year old, what’s the barrier keeping a truly exceptional chimp from being as bright as an average adult?

Question

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

Answer 1

Language would likely be a barrier to us knowing.

You could be as intelligent a chimp as you like, but if you couldn’t communicate it in human language, none of us would ever know.

Stephen Hawking is a pretty good human example of this – think about it; we only knew of his immense intelligence a) because his debilitating condition occurred when he was already an academic, b) through a combination of luck and technology he was able to carry on communicating his theories.

Now imagine a chimp of vast intelligence, or a dolphin, or whatever member of the animal kingdom; even if they’d worked out the meaning of the universe, how would we humans ever know? They might be able to communicate this to other chimps/dolphins, of course, but they’d likely be considered weird outsiders who should be concentrating on more practical matters like gathering more food or keeping the kids safe from killer whales rather than dreaming about that kind of nonsense all day.

Language also shapes conceptual thinking, and abstract thought, etc., but again the question is, even if they were geniuses in these regards, how would we ever know?