• Question: They say we evolved from apes but how come they are smarter than us?

    Asked by goldboy2 to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 28 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by binioon.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Apes aren’t smarter than us. They are quite clever and can solve all kinds of problems, but they are much less intelligent. There are lots of things that most humans take for granted that an ape could never learn to do, no matter how long you tried to teach it.

    • Photo: Katie McDonald

      Katie McDonald answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Hehe, why do you think they’re smarter? I mean, some apes might be smarter than some humans… I won’t name names 😉 But collectively, it’s not true!

    • Photo: Vee Mitchell

      Vee Mitchell answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      If you saw the recent science show (I think it may have been bang goes the theory) where they showed apes were much quicker at doing a pattern recognition task than humans you may well think they are smarter than us. Although they can do some things quicker or better than us because they have evolved these particular skills to live in the wild, overall we are much smarter than apes (and all other primates)

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      How do you measure intelligence? By our standards we are much more intelligent than just about every other creature on the planet. It only requires an IQ of about 40-50 to use basic speech. Most pigs have a relative IQ of 50 but cannot speak, ok they don’t have the language skills we do, but nor do apes.

      If you look at survival, apes beat us hands down. Does that mean they are smarter than us or just evolutionarily predisposed at being good at surviving in a jungle?

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