BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Young chimpanzees beat human adults in short-term memory tests conducted by Japanese researchers, media reported Tuesday.

The tests were done between chimpanzees and human adults, aiming to measure the ability to remember numerals.

The participants of the tests include human volunteers and chimpanzees that had been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9.

In the tests, four to nine numerals scattered across a touch screen flashed only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The participants were asked to touch these places in ascending order of the numbers.

The results of the tests showed that young chimps could do this faster than their mothers or humans while no more accurate. And in later tests with shorter appearing time of numbers, one of the young champanzees could do faster and more accurately than humans.

The results challenge the belief of many people. "No one can imagine that chimpanzees -- young chimpanzees at the age of 5 -- have a better performance in a memory task than humans," said Tetsuro Matsuzawa, director of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan.

Matsuzawa gave two factors that made chimpanzees win. For one thing, he believed human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.

The other factor was that the memory for images that was needed for the tests resembled a skill found in children, but dissipated with age.

(Agencies)