Photographic memory or what ever it is - it's impressive! Makes you wonder about human, allegedly humane treatment, of so-called dumb animals - I'm not wondering about the treatment, I'm wondering which one is the dumb animal....

Stevietwo

Bottom line: We are dumb animals, but we also have a bigger gun !

photographic memory and identical regurgitation of information aren't rationality. scanners have photographic memory and computers can output information that is identical to information that is inputed. you guys need to take some logic courses. very interesting nonetheless

I remember the old "Organ Grinder and the Monkey" in a lot of the old movies when I was a kid. It kind of makes me wonder now who was leading whom. The organ grinder couldn't even remember how to play an instrument - all he had to do was turn a crank, whereas the monkey knew which people and windows to climb to get the coins. There's another site that proves that monkeys are also able to do arithmetic almost as fast as college students. "A mathematical competition between two rhesus macaques and fourteen undergraduates has revealed a new similarity between monkeys and college students: their ability to handle basic addition." from http://www.instructables.com/forum/TTMX3MBFABDYRI9/ . One site says they're even faster than us if the test uses a computer screen: http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=210585

Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe theyre preset patterns occuring in a predetermined order and that they probably spent hours beforehand teaching the chimp the pattern?

Sugarllama - did it ever occur to you that maybe reading up on the subject before making a brainless comment? Science News just had an article on this. This Chimp is 5 years old (I think) his mother cant go as fast as he can. They did this test at different display speeds and at 240 ms the chimp got it right 80% of the time and humans only 40%. at slower display speeds humans had even more accurate scores

You people crack me up, first of all Chimpanzees aren't monkeys they are apes. Second they obviously have more incentive than humans because they are endangered so they have to get smarter to adapt. Not only that these ones are doing this for a reward, and either way they are using more of their; almost equally large brain compared homo sapiens; we only use between 10 and 15% of ours, they are doing it alot faster than you could even dream. So, givin all of these facts look at a bonobo they are like the chimp in most every way but, they have more in common genetically to a homo sapien than the chimp.

It's a memory game. Any dummy who is trained in the game can remember where the numbers are. This was a "less than honest" attempt at showing that primates are smarter than people. The japanese scientist's should lose their funding!

I would be fascinated to see how this relates to color memory. Let's see them play Simon or something similar and see what happens. If the photographic memory part holds true then the results should be somewhat similar. However, if the pattern memory degrades because of the introduction of varying color sequences it could mean they cannot see in color correctly (not sure on this one) or perhaps color, in fact, complicates matters for them as it does for some humans. Honestly, get them to play the game 'memory' with the cute little cards to turn over. That might dispel some of the memory questions, at least from a pattern recognition standpoint and could mean more of a location recognition standpoint (brain focusing on specific patters in specific locations.) All of this is unfounded, of course. However, it would be interesting to see the results nonetheless.

First of all I think someone should point out that throughout the video it was the same chimp. Unless there were several chimps in the experiment (which I hope there was) it's results can be considered biased. And if there were several chimps, they should have put them inn the video as well. I agree with johnnyjohnny, this video shows only that chimps have a very good memory (or at least one does). It does not show and type of reasoning or logical analysis skills.

So how did they get a midget IRS agent to agree to impersonate one of his superiors and perform repetitive number exorcises for Blip TV.

When chimps invent a numerical system and then a computer to make a memory test, I'll give them some credit.

I'm no chimp, so forgive my ignorance, but it seems to me that the chimp is taking in the entire screen at one time and remembering it, where as the human being attempts to memorize the locations of the numbers one at a time. Have they put the little apes up against a human with a photographic memory?

Ever consider that they may be like human savants (people like Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man"? Recent 60 minutes says that there are about 50 people like this in the world. Obviously, their heredity has sacrificed a lot of brain functionality in other areas in order to grant them these seemingly superhuman skills in certain areas. It would be interesting to see how one "gifted" in this particular way would perform on such a test. There is one example I know of where someone has such a skill with no apparent deficits otherwise, and actually has a career based on it. I read about a news radio show host in the Midwest (U.S.) somewhere who remembers every single thing that has happened to him since birth. Give him a date and time of day, and he can tell you exactly what was happening then. More verifiably, he can tell you what was in the news that day as well.

Do people really think they can do this? I think this is bullshit and people probably know that too. It is impossible. There is not even enough time for those monkeys to cognitively process those numbers through their eyes to their brain to memorize that information. Even if they could it does not even begin to match a humans' memory power. If you want pure memorization look at Akira Haraguchi, he memorized 100000 digits of Pi ( seen as 3.14, used to determine the circumference of a circle). Not to mention even the ordinary human has nearly 10-20 encyclopedias worth of information stored in their brain. That is not including the number of stimuli processed in the brain which is in the trillions!!!!! So if you wanted a human brain that could just purely memorize, you would have a brain that would rival and outmatch supercomputers nonetheless monkeys. Not to mention that we have one power that a monkey can never have, and that is consciousness. Sure they could recognize themselves in the mirror, but that is it. They do not have the power to recognize themselves as a species like we do or contemplate existence and the presence of a divine being. That is a step beyond any creature possibly in the galaxy.