Monkey IQ and the evolution of intelligence
Scientists at Harvard have developed a pseudo-IQ test for monkeys which shows that monkeys display consistent levels of intelligence across a variety of cognitive tests.
Banerjee's team ranked the 22 monkeys across all 11 tasks and found that the same animals tended to perform similarly well across all the tests. When her team calculated an IQ score for each monkey, the smarter monkey bested the less intelligent monkey two-thirds of the time for any given test.
"This is a difficult study to undertake, and this team should be commended for doing it so well," says Robert Deaner, a psychologist at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. He says the new work "really strengthens the argument" that general intelligence has a long evolutionary history.
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LOL
My first reaction, I hate to admit was something like this: "Oh, great. We've obviously ironed out all the controversy surrounding human general intelligence. Now we can start arguing about monkeys."
But yeah, this is an important line of research, and perhaps we can solve some of the problems with quantifying human intelligence by understanding a simpler version of it. I notice that the story says monkeys. I wonder why they're not doing apes...
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Because monkeys are cheaper to di-sect
and the whole... "Not able to kill a human in under 6 seconds" Rule, for animal experimentation
You piss off a monkey, you'll make it to the door... with an ape >.> not so much
What Would Kharn Do?
Very interesting. To follow on to what Hamby says, I would like to see this type of work extended to other species. For example, we know that dolphins are fairly smart from the communications studies. Which bring up the question of just what intelligence really is. We have a good idea of the problem solving ability of rats.
Where I am going is that I would like to know what we could learn if we were to study what intelligence might mean for a very different life form, such as an octopus. They have a largely decentralized nervous system but if they could be shown to have some high order problem solving abilities, that would be fairly interesting to know about.
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I think that dogs have the edge on the IQ scale,but that just my opinion,due to the fact that we have three dogs.
Signature ? How ?
For those interested in the subject PBS in NY WNET is rebroadcasting a Nova program entitled soething like "Genius Ape" that is about this subject and a comparison to humans.
Check your own PBS stations for when it MAY be shown.