Are you cleverer than an orangutan?
How good are you at strategic thinking? Study the list of items below, then look away, and try to list all seven (in any order):
Daffodil
Lizard
Fish
Apple
Seashell
Doctor
Rock
How did you do? Better than an orangutan? Iris, an 11-month-old female orangutan tested at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington DC, scored an average of just under four out of seven (using a touchscreen, rather than saying the words).
Although you probably at least matched this total, what is more important here is the order in which you recalled the words. Over multiple runs through the test, Iris spontaneously developed a strategy of grouping similar items together (eg fish was always followed by lizard; seashell always by rock).
Of course, we can’t tell exactly what types of categories were in Iris’s head; but the fact that she used a strategy at all is evidence of a logical reasoning capacity that we might have thought beyond orangutans. And perhaps you, too, depending on your score? But did you use a strategy like Iris’s?
Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee? by Ben Ambridge is published by Profile Books, £12.99. To order it for £11.04, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
