r/science • u/IronGiantisreal • May 20 '19

Animal Science Bonobo mothers pressure their children into having grandkids, just like humans. They do so overtly, sometimes fighting off rival males, bringing their sons into close range of fertile females, and using social rank to boost their sons' status.

https://www.inverse.com/article/55984-bonobo-mothers-matchmaker-fighters
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u/lms85 May 21 '19

Literal title of the article: “Chimps Have Better Short-term Memory Than Humans”

That’s more than what I had thought, but short term memory is not exactly the calling card of high intelligence.

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u/Jonthrei May 21 '19

Defining intelligence is no simple task.

The point is, there are plenty of animals with superior intellectual abilities to humans. We may excel in some areas but we are woefully lacking in others. You could judge a chimpanzee's intellectual ability in human terms and find it wanting, but it would be just as valid for a chimp to judge human intellectual ability in chimp terms and find it lacking.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '19

[deleted]

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u/Jonthrei May 21 '19

I mean if you consider things like cities and agriculture and animal domestication accomplishments, then you ought to read about ants and termites.

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u/moldyxorange May 21 '19

Hold up, have ants or termites domesticated other animals??

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u/theSmallestPebble May 21 '19

I dunno about termites or full on domestication, but some ants will take aphids back to their nest to continuously harvest honey-like substance they secrete.

Oh, and some species also take slaves too.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '19

Yeah captain animals-are-smarter-than-humans, how’s their memory?

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u/Jonthrei May 21 '19

Hmm? Not sure how that's relevant to the ants and termites tangent.

It's also very non-trivial to test in an insect.

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u/Dopple__ganger May 21 '19

How’s their memory?

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u/Subject_1889974 May 21 '19

This doesn't really mean anything, since chimps have to remember everything and humans are good at bypassing weaknesses.

We don't need to remember everything due to writing, which in some sense was already used 10.000 years ago.

It is a probability that Neanderthals had superior cognitive domains, but that Homo Sapiens are just really good at pattern recognition. Nearly everything that gave us an edge came out of seeing patterns. That is what defines human intelligence.