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
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.
Latest Answers