Mathematical monkeys?

I must confess to being a sucker for any study involving rhesus monkeys. I developed a fondness for the little guys during my grad school days at UCLA, even though they were prone to homocidal impulses when they got loose. They’re just sooooo smart. Now we learn that they may be even smarter than we thought.

Jessica Cantlon and Elizabeth Brannon of Duke University presented sets of dots in two boxes very briefly (0.5 seconds) to their human and monkey participants. You are supposed to add up the dots in the first set of boxes, then pick the correct box containing the sum from the second set of boxes. The short presentation prevents actual counting, which might give the humans a verbal advantage. This video shows both a monkey and human doing the task.

So….who won? The students had a better accuracy rate (94% versus 76% for the monkeys). Response times, however, were about the same. Both humans and monkeys needed about 1 second to respond, and both made more errors as the numbers of dots increased.

Cantlon and Brannon do not expect monkeys to enroll in calculus class anytime soon. However, just as we see in the demonstration of language-like behavior in other animals, this study gives us a sense that our mathematical skills are located on an evolutionary continuum. We also gain a bit more respect for our fellow creatures.

You can read the whole article here (thank you PLoS!).

I’m not sure if the same monkeys were used, but in a previous counting study, it appears they are Rosenkrantz and Macduff….perhaps they will be reciting Shakespeare next?

Cantlon JF, Brannon EM (2007) Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students. PLoS Biol 5(12): e328 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050328