Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

It would be like assigning Earth’s gravity a different name than the moon’s, just because we think Earth is special.

Ayumu, is a young male who, in 2007, put human memory to shame. Trained on a touchscreen, he can recall a series of numbers from 1 through 9 and tap them in the right order, even though the numbers appear randomly on the screen and are replaced by white squares as soon as he starts tapping. Having memorized the numbers, Ayumu touches the squares in the correct order. Reducing the amount of time the numbers flash on the screen doesn’t seem to matter to Ayumu, even though humans become less accurate the shorter the time interval.