Chimps and Champs

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting just a little tired of all of these smart-off know-it-all chimpanzees making my generation look bad. Recently there was a study done at Yale in which college students were pitted against monkeys in an intelligence test. The test involved numbers flashing on a screen and the participant being able to replicate patterns with their fingers. Who won this twisted little high-speed Bingo tournament? You guessed it: the monkeys. By a landslide!

Now, at first glance this ” experiment” may seem to prove that three-year- old Chimpanzees are more intelligent than your average college student, but I think there are some lingering variables that might cast this so called “experiment” into doubt. First of all:

·        Do we know whether these college students are truly average? It’s been my experience that the type of college student that agrees to give over a day to engage in a battle of wits with a chimpanzee is usually not the one who’s working with a full bushel of bananas. If you get my drift. If Yale University brought in the campus Bob Marley Society to perform these tests it might speak to some of the results.

·        Also, how do we know these chimps weren’t above average? Are we dealing with the Mensa monkeys? Think of it this way: Gary Kasprov can beat a computer at chess but I can’t get my computer to print Word documents. The sample that is selected to represent the species in these sorts of studies can skew the results. In general, I’d say computers are smarter than humans but that humans are smarter than monkeys (monkeys remain unaffected by computers and simply smash them into the nearest tree, if you’re interested in making this into a variation on “rock, paper, scissors”). With the exception of a few obvious prodigies in either category, this pattern generally holds. So something fantastic must have been amidst for the Chimpanzees to perform so exceptionally. I personally suspect that these monkeys were nothing more than highly evolved apes brought back from some futuristic post-nuclear dystopia by none other than Charlton Heston. If you’re scratching your head right now, go ask your parents.

·        Furthermore, assuming that both species are properly represented, how is pointing to numbers on a screen an indicator of intelligence anyway? I mean, do we really know if the Chimps even understood the game? How do we know they weren’t simply trying to order a Big Mac? Assuming that they actually knew exactly what they were doing, what does that prove? Should we make Chimpanzees air traffic controllers?

My beef is this:  This experiment was conducted with no practical intent other than to make us feel stupid. Just like standardized tests! Every year I was in high school there was a news report about how our test scores, nation-wide, were averaging between Latvia and Gilligan’s Island. The media runs these stories for the same reason they run Sudoku and The New York Times Cross Word Puzzle: to make us feel stupid!

WELL I”VE HAD IT! I’m fighting back! I challenge these monkeys to a do-over! This time on our terms! That’s right, an intensive 12 hour Primate Intelligence Decathlon!  This Intelligence Decathlon will consist of eight parts:

1.     The Duck Hunt Challenge. That’s right, we’ll start with the elementary foundation of education upon which all other bricks are laid:  “Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt” on the original Nintendo game system! You can point to numbers on a screen, but can you land a cartoon duck? The beauty of this game is, of course, no opposable thumbs necessary!

2.     The Street Smarts Challenge. There’s more to intelligence than just cognitive adaptation to shifts in environmental stimuli, you also gotta have street smarts! One chimp and one human will be dropped off in Spanish Harlem with nothing but a dollar and a switch-blade. If any FOX executives are reading this, I’ll sell you this reality T.V. premise at a reasonable price.

3.     The SCENE IT: STAR WARS EDITION Challenge. You don’t remember which installment in the Star Wars Trilogy contains the scene with Han Solo blasting the bounty hunter Guido in the Cantina? Awww, here’s a banana and a tissue! (epoH weN A :VI edosipe SRAW RATS)

4.     The Deal or No Deal Challenge. I’d like to see a chimp out-smart Howie Mandel! No really, I’d like to see it. My money is on the chimp.

5.     The Texas Hold ‘Em Challenge. Do you know when to hold em’, know when to fold em” know when to umm… dum dee doo dee duuuum! I’m a little rusty on my Kenny Rogers, what, with my sub-chimp recall ability and everything

6.     The Rubic’s Cube Challenge.  We’ll set up a chimpanzee and a human with a Rubic’s Cube and time them. Whichever in the least amount of time, decides that Rubic’s Cubes are pointless and leaves to find something else to do, wins.

7.     The White Castle Challenge. Which species can eat the most White Castle hamburgers in a single sitting? I know this isn’t an intelligence test per se, but aren’t you just dying to know?

8.     Opposable Thumb Wrestling. We should have this one in the bag!

So there you have it Chimpanzees! If you think you’re so smart then show up at Yale University this Saturday and we’ll settle this once and for all! That reminds me, I need to try Map-Questing Yale again. My stupid computer keeps telling me it’s not a real town!