Specific Monkeys Proving Their Intelligence

Chimpanzee Koko

Koko is probably the most famous talking monkey in history. She knew over a thousand signs of American Sign Language and understood about two thousand English words. Koko became famous not only for her vocabulary but also for her ability to express emotions. When her beloved kitten was killed under a car, she showed signs of sadness, gloom, and crying. She lived for forty-six years and became a symbol of how deeply monkeys can understand human language.

Chimpanzee Ay

Ay was a genius from Kyoto University. She became the first chimpanzee to successfully indicate numbers. By the age of five, she had mastered numerical symbols from one to six, and by seven and a half — all twenty-six letters of the English alphabet and began to recognize lexigrams for words such as apple and banana. She also distinguished more than a hundred Chinese characters and eleven colors. In her free time, Ay loved to draw, and one of her paintings was printed on a scarf given to primatologist Jane Goodall.

Kanzi is a dwarf chimpanzee who understood English by ear and communicated with a keyboard using lexigrams, that is, symbols representing words. He knew about three thousand spoken words. His uniqueness lies in the fact that he became interested in symbols independently, observing the training of his foster mother, rather than being specially trained. Kanzi also made stone tools himself and played video games, including Minecraft.

Washoe was the first animal to learn American Sign Language. She mastered over one hundred thirty signs, which corresponds to the vocabulary level of a four-year-old child. Washoe is also known for teaching some signs to her adopted son and other chimpanzees, demonstrating the transfer of skills within the group.

Ayumu is the son of Ay, inheriting an extraordinary memory. In a test of short-term visual memory, he outperformed university students by remembering the arrangement of numbers on the screen for fractions of a second. This proved that monkeys can outperform humans in some cognitive tasks.

What Monkeys Can't Do

Despite their impressive abilities, there are limits.

• They can learn word symbols, but they do not construct complex sentences with grammar.
• Human culture accumulates from generation to generation. In monkeys, the transmission of knowledge exists, but it does not accumulate at such a speed.