Monkeying around may not seem like the most mentally demanding pass time, but those crazy chimps may be more enlightened than originally thought.
A recent Japanese memory study poised young opposable thumb-bearing, diaper-wearing chimps against university students in a mega memory test. Asking the respondents to recall a sequence of numbers, the study aimed to find out if young monkeys have better memories than older monkeys. Just for the fun of it, humans were thrown into the mix.
No bananas were harmed during the study, but humans have suffered a blow to the ego after discovering that not only did the five year old monkeys beat their monkey parents in memory testing, they also beat university students.
The speed and accuracy of the chimps brought the human contestants to their knees, and photographic memory is suggested to be the main reason that the chimps beat out their Homo Sapien opponents.
Monkey business aside, the human memory needs a little TLC on a regular basis to boost memory capability. In order to reduce memory loss over time, the experts suggest keeping the cholesterol down, staying away from cigarettes and liquor, living a social lifestyle and learning new things. This may provide some insight into the poor scoring on behalf of the university students...
Maybe chimps aren't the party animals we once thought!
