Big gorilla at the L.A. Zoo
Snatched the glasses right off my face
Took the keys to my BMW
Left me here to take his place

From Gorilla, You’re a Desperado (Warren Zevon, 1980)

It was bad enough to learn that chimpanzees kick human ass when it comes to short-term memory.

Now it turns out that monkeys perform almost as well as college students when it comes to basic arithmetic skills. That’s according to researchers at Duke University’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, who pitted man and macaque in a dual of mental cipherin’.

Human and simian subjects were presented with groups of dots. The macaques had been trained to sum the dots with bribes of Kool Aid. They must really like Very Berry, too: the monkeys scored correctly 76 percent of the time, while Duke’s finest managed 94 percent. Hardly a blowout.

It’s the first time primates have been shown to actually understand basic mathematical concepts. This summer, a Japanese team announced the results of a multi-year trial of chimpanzee numerical recognition and memory. In every case, the chimps trounced humans when presented with a touch screen randomly displaying numbers. After touching the first number, all characters were obscured with white squares. The chimps has no problem recalling the numeral positions in order — at only a moment’s glance. No human successfully completed the sequence.

There are a couple of other things you have to give up to chimpanzees. They’re vastly stronger than humans. Chimps are immune to the effects of AIDS and certain neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s They’re not responsible for clogging or Britney Spears.

But we’re superior, right?

Link: Breitbart