Intelligence
Orangutans are among the most intelligent primates. Experiments suggest they can figure out some invisible displacement problems with a representational strategy. In addition, Zoo Atlanta has a touch-screen computer where their two Sumatran orangutans play games. Scientists hope the data they collect will help researchers learn about socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behaviour from trial and error, and point to new conservation strategies. A 2008 study of two orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo showed orangutans can use 'calculated reciprocity', which involves weighing the costs and benefits of gift exchanges and keeping track of these over time. Orangutans are the the first nonhuman species documented to do so. Orangutans are very technically adept nest builders, making a new nest each evening in only in 5 to 6 minutes and choosing branches which they know can support their body weight.
Read more about this topic: Orang Hutan
Famous quotes containing the word intelligence:
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)
“It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man,—he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, possesses an intelligence which the white man does not,—and it increases my own capacity, as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)