Saturday, August 05, 2006
Apes, not Monkeys, Ace IQ Tests
The great apes are the smartest of all non-human primates, with orangutans and chimpanzees consistently besting monkeys and lemurs on a variety of intelligence tests, Duke University Medical Center researchers have found.
It's clear that some species can and do develop enhanced abilities for solving particular problems," said Robert O. Deaner, Ph.D., who led the study as part of his doctoral dissertation. "But our results imply that natural selection may favor a general type of intelligence in some circumstances. We suspect that this was crucial in human evolution."
The study was published online August 1, 2006, in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (download here). Funding was provided by the medical center's Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy.
technorati tags: great+apes, primates, orangutans, chimpanzees, monkeys, lemurs, intelligence, duke+university, species, natural+selection, human, evolution, evolutionary, psychology, anthropology, anatomy
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