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And we think we are smarter… Chimps mentally map fruit trees Chimpanzees remember the exact location of all their favourite fruit trees. Their spatial memory is so precise that they can find a single tree among more than 12,000 others within a patch of forest, primatologists have found. More than that, the chimps also recall how productive each tree is, and decide to travel further to eat from those they know will yield the most fruit. Acquiring such an ability may have helped drive the evolution of sophisticated primate brains. Emmanuelle Normand and Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany teamed up with Simone Ban of the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire to investigate the spatial memory of chimpanzees in the wild.

And we think we are smarter…

Chimps mentally map fruit trees

Chimpanzees remember the exact location of all their favourite fruit trees.

Their spatial memory is so precise that they can find a single tree among more than 12,000 others within a patch of forest, primatologists have found.

More than that, the chimps also recall how productive each tree is, and decide to travel further to eat from those they know will yield the most fruit.

Acquiring such an ability may have helped drive the evolution of sophisticated primate brains.

Emmanuelle Normand and Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany teamed up with Simone Ban of the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire to investigate the spatial memory of chimpanzees in the wild.



Tags: chimpsspatial memory

June 08, 2009, 11:16am