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[carrie mclaren <brooklynite282 AT gmail.com>]

Baby chimps are smarter than kids

By Harleen Kaur

February 2, 2009

http://www.themedguru.com/articles/baby_chimps_are_smarter_than_kids-86120411.html


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.