Nova Presents Ape Genius and Mirror Neurons

Nova Presents Ape Genius and Mirror Neurons

Ape Genius presents resourceful information about apes and their development in comparison to Humans. It sights chimpanzees making and using deadly weapons. In some cases they seem to even be collaborating in premeditated attacks for food. The video even sights apes using water as a tool. Their intellectual ability is closely related to that of the human’s but is said to lack “full ignition” due to behavioral issues. While no other species is known to do many of the things an ape can do, including making and using weapons, apes have emotional issues which inhibit their learning abilities and thus separate them from the humans. They are both aggressive and impulsive which is said to be the reason that they are unable to learn from or be taught by each other. A simple experiment testing children, dogs, and chimpanzees placed an instructor in front of two cups and then had he/she point to a particular cup. The goal was to see if the participant would understand that the instructor’s attention is now on this third object, and with this understanding then draw their own attention to this object as well. Both the children and dogs were able to pick up this hint and choose the correct cup. However the chimpanzees, to much surprise, repeatedly failed at this task. While chimpanzees, under laboratory conditions, will ask for the help of a human; they are unable to collaborate with each other to obtain a certain goal. Bonoboos are a more social bread of monkey and even this intelligent creature will only collaborate with known friends of their species when the food that they are working together to get is separated into individual dishes. Chimpanzees also lack the ability to cheep one another on. The more social culture of Humans is much more evolving because humans have the ability to learn and share information. Mirror Neurons shows it’s viewers a recent discovery that will help explain this difference. A neuron known to be responsible for motor...

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