According to a new study published in the latest issue of Developmental Psychobiology, orphaned baby chimpanzees that received motherly care and attention from human surrogate parents were found to be more intellectually advanced than the average human baby, when both were compared at nine months.
When the chimps were nine months old, they took an IQ test normally used to evaluate human infant development. Bard explained that typical items on the cognitive test required the chimps to "imitate scribbling on paper," look at pictures in a book as the examiner pointed to each one, and pick up a cup to find a block hidden underneath.
The infant chimps aced the test, even surpassing the scores of average human infants tested at the same age.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Their thesis is that human contact helps IQ's of both chimps and humans. That seems fine.
Then they test baby chimps. One group gets human attention the other none, just the necessisites of life such as food.
So, their conclusion should be chimps in the wild do not develop as fast as chimps with human contact. If they want to draw the conclusion that humans should develope better too, I think that is fine, but what does the study have to do with comparing the intelligence of humans to chimps? Wild chimps will score better than humans the first year too.
Check out the book "The Magical Child" by Joseph Chilton Pearce.