To do maths, chimps equal humans

BEIJING, Dec. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- Chimps perform as well as college students at mental addition and non-verbal maths skills are not unique to humans, according to researchers at Duke University Monday.

"This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations," said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke, whose work appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology.

"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance," Cantlon added.

The scientists tested two monkeys and 14 college students on a math task where they had to add two sets of dots together. They were each shown one set of dots on a computer touch screen for a half-second, and then another set a half-second later.

They were then shown two separate clusters of dots at the same time, one of which was the correct sum of the first two sets.

Finally, a third display appeared with two boxes, one containing a number of dots equal to the first two sets added together, and the other an incorrect number of dots. Touching the right box earned the monkeys a fruit juice reward.

Over hundreds of trials involving 40 different addition problems the monkeys had an average accuracy of 76 percent. The students were correct 94 percent of the time.

That monkeys and humans share the ability to add suggests that basic arithmetic may be part of our shared evolutionary past.

The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and show the importance of language -- which allows for counting and more advanced calculations -- in the evolution of maths in humans.

(Agencies)