Chimpanzee Outperforms Humans In Maze Simulation

A 22 year old female chimpanzee has outperformed 4 adults and 12 children on a complex task in a simulated virtual reality maze.

Researchers studying intelligence pitted four mature chimps against twelve human kids aged between 3 and 12 years old as well as four adult human beings. Most of the chimps averaged the same score as the children aged between 3 and 6 and completed the maze in roughly the same amount of time. Panzee the 22 year old chimp was most successful in the travel efficiency metric which measures how much distance is covered before completing the maze. Panzee took a significantly shorter route completing the maze beating both the kids and adults.

Panzee and the other chimps were asked whether they wanted perform the task and if they did not feel like participating they could shake their heads and say no. The researchers often had to bribe the chimps with either a grape or the universal favorite M&M’s. Adult human participants were also coaxed with the promise of a gift certificate for a bookstore whilst the kids were rewarded with stickers and pencils.

Computer simulations make it simple to change a maze or add a symbol, but it is impossible to recreate the kind of environment that a wild chimp would find familiar. A chimp that was brought up in the Language Research Center is a well fed animal and never feels the kind of pressure to find food or starve.

Wild chimps also have to compete with each other to find food with males tending to form bands and bullying unwary females who need to find sources of food that are less obvious. Researchers believe that this phenomenon explains some of the patterns they have seen such as females doing better than males on goal orientated maze and puzzle games.

Image Credit:Chimp Eden Sanctuary – Nikki by AfrikaForce, on Flickr