Re: Chimps are smarter than your babies
Interesting enough, and actually quite surprising.
But I thought of two things which makes this knowledge pretty much useless:
# Difference in brains: Since we are talking about two different species their brains will probably not develop the same regions in the same way. Even though they are alike in many, many ways they are still very different in areas such as perception, interpretation of sounds and so on.
# The chimps were given 4 hours of human-time, but they also had access to their peer chimps. So in all probability these peers taught the younglings basic chimp manouvers and so forth. Thus enabling their natural way of learning by seeing-doing. The combination between a human interaction and natural peering *might* enhance or speed up the development of the young chimp's brain since different experiences equals a more complex frontal lobe (in humans too), and a more complex frontal lobe makes us more capable of interpreting and taking action upon new situations.
The ONLY really sure way to state this as a fact would be to take a group of human and chimp infants and have them raised the EXACT same conditions until they are both 9 months old, and then make them take the test. This might be damn hard though, you can't make a chimp understand words (except for some association) and such.
(Damn long post.)
