The Mind, Muscle and Magnanimity of Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees are amazing. They are more intelligent (and more powerful) than you can possibly imagine.

Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. Pan troglodytes, the Common Chimpanzee, live primarily in West and Central Africa, and its cousin, the Bonobo or “Pygmy Chimpanzee,” Pan paniscus, is found in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Let’s explore the world of the amazing chimpanzee!

Mind

First, let’s examine the mind of the chimpanzee. I submit to you this first bit of evidence that overwhelmingly proves that chimps possess a superior intellect. Yes, chimpanzees can play Pac-Man.

Meet Kanzi.

Kanzi is a male Bonobo that has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude. According to Smithsonian Magazine Kanzi by now has learned 348 lexigrams, and understands over 3000 spoken English words. When he hears a spoken word (through headphones, to filter out nonverbal clues), he points to the correct lexigram on a computer.

Also notable are Kanzi’s ability to understand aspects of spoken language and associate it with lexigrams, his ability to understand simple grammatical sentences, and possibly his invention of novel vocalized words. According to a Discover article, Kanzi is an accomplished tool user.

In an outing in the Georgia woods, Kanzi touched the symbols for “marshmallows” and “fire.” Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick.

Another account of Kanzi’s ability to communicate occurred when a group of humans performed a Maori War Dance for some Bonobos. This dance includes thigh-slapping, chest-thumping, and hollering. Almost all the Bonobos present interpreted this as an aggressive display, and reacted with loud screams, tooth-baring, and pounding the walls and floor.

All but Kanzi, who remained perfectly calm, and conveyed to the humans that he knew no threat was meant, but that the performance should be carried out away from the other Bonobos so as not to upset them. So a private performance in another room was successfully, peacefully and happily carried out.

Here is a video of Kanzi following a series of complicated commands.
This video demonstrates Kanzi’s ability to make and use tools.
Kanzi shows his excitement from showing off his necklace.
Here Kanzi displays his ability to understand spoken language, and chews bubble gum.

Not only can chimps recognize themselves in mirrors (they are self-aware), they even outperform humans in some memory tasks.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a Kyoto primatologist, described a young chimp watching as numbers 1 through 9 flashed on the computer screen at random positions. Then the numbers disappeared in no more than a second. White squares remained where the numbers had been. The chimp casually but swiftly pressed the squares, calling back the numbers in ascending order — 1, 2, 3, etc.

The test was repeated several times, with the numbers and squares in different places. The chimp, which had months of training accompanied by promised food rewards, almost never failed to remember where the numbers had been. The video included scenes of a human failing the test, seldom recalling more than one or two numbers, if any.

“Humans can’t do it,” Dr. Matsuzawa said. “Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task.”

Chimps have also been known to use tools for finding termites, and cracking nuts:

Muscle

In tests at the Bronx Zoo in 1924, a dynamometer – a scale that measures the mechanical force of a pull on a spring – was erected in a monkey house. A 165-pound male chimpanzee named “Boma” registered a pull of 847 pounds, using only his right hand (although he did have his feet braced against the wall). A 165-pound man, by comparison, could manage a one-handed pull of about 210 pounds.

Even more frightening, a female chimp, weighing a mere 135 pounds and going by the name of Suzette, checked in with a one-handed pull of 1,260 pounds. In dead lifts, chimps have been known to manage weights of 600 pounds without even breaking a sweat.

Thus chimpanzees have over 5 times the upper-body strength of a human male. So naturally, they could make short work of humans if they chose to. And here is what happens when they do:

They have also been known to kill and eat monkeys:

Magnanimity

Chimps happily help out unrelated chimps and unfamiliar humans, even if it means exerting themselves for no reward.

True altruism – unselfish acts for another’s benefit – was until recently considered uniquely human. Usually when animals cooperate, they either help relatives – thereby increasing chances of passing shared genes to the next generation – or they count on having favours returned in the future.

12 out of 18 semi-wild chimpanzees went out of their way to help an unfamiliar human who was struggling to reach a stick:

Equivalent experiments with human toddlers gave similar results:

In another experiment, the apes were taught to remotely unchain a door. When the chimps then saw another, unrelated, chimp trying to open the door, they released the chain more often than when their peer was not actively trying to get in. They chose to help the other chimp achieve its goal:

In an incident that is both heart-stopping and heartwarming, a pregnant bonobo at the San Diego Zoo bit off the tip of her keeper’s index finger. But another bonobo rescued the severed tip from her habitat mate and returned it to keepers so it could be re-attached.

And chimpanzees seem to show a degree of empathy and altruism that exceeds even that of some humans:

The emotions of caring and mourning have been observed, as in the case of the chimp mother that carried on her back the corpse of her 2-year-old daughter for days after she had died. After fights between two chimps, scientists said, others in the group were seen consoling the loser and acting as mediators to restore peace.

Devyn Carter of Emory described the sympathetic response to a chimp named Knuckles, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy. No fellow chimp was seen to take advantage of his disability. Even the alpha male gently groomed Knuckles.

Knuckles can be seen here at the top:

Therefore it is quite clear that chimps have a distinct sense of right and wrong and dislike unfair occurrences. As time goes on, I’m sure we will discover even more about the chimpanzee and its humanity.

I leave you with some photographs of Cheeta, star of Tarzan, who is still alive at the age of 75, making him the oldest chimpanzee in the world.

Here he is celebrating his 75th birthday:

Does anyone have any footage of the “mirror test” being administered to chimps? I tried to find some online, but couldn’t seem to find any.

And if you know of any other great pictures or video of the amazing chimpanzee, let us know!