ago's Duke University reported from tests that monkies who remain monkies and didn't evolve into humans are smarter at mental addition than today's college students.)
2007-12-17 14:48:29 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
LOL. We don't really know what the monkeys of 22 million years ago were like, in terms of behavior. We just surmise that they're similar to what we see in today's monkeys.
Anyway, there're trade-offs. Your linguistic skills are superior to those of any monkey of any time.
2007-12-17 15:14:59 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Ancestry aside (the previous answers addressed that point well), the primates used in those experiments preformed better because their brains are *less* developed in certain areas.
The experiment flashed a bunch of numbers on a screen for a fraction of a second, and then the subject had to repeat the order of the numbers by pressing buttons. The primates were more accurate than the humans, but they also responded almost instantly. The response time suggests that the primates were going off of pure memorization. This makes sense, since the human brain has evolved to process information, draw connections, and integrate it into context. This takes time, and in situations like this, can be a disadvantage. The primates, on the other hand, had no abstract concept of numbers (though they could recognize the and match their shapes) and didn't process the information. In other words, they used something like a photographic memory, where they could still envision the numbers, but had no concept of what the numbers meant.
The primates would likely have the exact same response to shapes, colors, or letters displayed in a similar fashion. Over the course of evolution from a common ancestor, humans simply lost this photographic memory (for the most part) but gained the processing and abstraction powers that make true thought and understanding possible.
It is similar to the way that a computer could play programmed notes and reproduce a song, but it would take a human to truly create music. The computer could perform more accurately and faster, but that doesn't make it a better musician than the human composer.
2007-12-18 12:15:06 · answer #2 · answered by andymanec 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, silly. Today's monkeys are not the monkeys of our evolutionary past and we are descended from a ape-like primate anyway.
I think you knew all this, but are trying to make an obscure point.
2007-12-17 22:54:05 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋