Baby chimps are smarter than kids

Portsmouth, Hampshire, February 2: For long, chimpanzees have been known to be good at mimicking humans. Now, they have scientists to back them, who declare that they are even smatter than human infants.

The latest research by Hampshire scientists claims that baby chimps are smarter than toddlers at nine months.

The research found that orphaned chimpanzee infants, who are mothered by humans, are far more advanced and inquisitive than an average child at nine months.

Professor Kim Bard, a psychology expert at the University of Portsmouth, found that young chimps needed more than just physical support. To become well adjusted adults, they needed emotional support as well, just like humans, which made them cognitively advanced than human infants.

“The attachment system of infant chimpanzees appears surprisingly similar to that found in human infants,” said Bard.

The chimpanzees receiving emotional and physical care were happier than those receiving standard institutionalized care.

“Those given responsive care were less easily stressed, less often attached to 'comfort blankets', had healthier relationships with their caregivers and were less likely to develop stereotypic rocking.

“They were also more advanced intellectually than chimpanzees reared with standard institutionalised care,” Bard added.

Prof Bard revealed that chimps receiving an average of 20 hours of attention a week were happier than those who just had their physical needs fulfilled.

She said, “Early experiences, either of warm, responsive care-giving or of extreme deprivation, have a dramatic impact on emotional and cognitive outcomes in both chimpanzees and humans”.

The study acted as a “stark warning” to raise the fact that looking after just the physical needs of an infant were most likely to make him/her unhappy, maladjusted and under-achieving.

The study, which stressed on the vital role of parental sensitivity, made it clear that humans outgrow chimpanzees in development terms, as they grow older.

“Parental sensitivity is an important factor in human infant development, contributing to emotionally and cognitively strong children, and it would seem the same is true for great apes as well,” the expert maintained.

Professor Bard studied the care records of baby chimpanzees who were in the in the Great Ape Nursery while they were at risk of dying due to inadequate maternal skills of their mothers.

The study, which is the first to compare the effects of the ways the chimps and human babies are raised, observed 46 chimpanzees in the nursery at the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, in the 1980s and 1990s.