Who is smarter chimpanzee or orangutan

Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your subscription. Your subscription will end shortly. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your access to the most informative and considered journalism in the UK. Accessibility Links Skip to content. Menu Close. Languages have grammar and syntax, which some believe may even be hardwired into the human brain. If other primates are born with this special skill, nobody has seen evidence of it yet.

Your information will be used in accordance with our privacy policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. Article continues below. Does this mean that Rocky the orangutan might eventually be able to learn to speak like a human? Like other high primates chimpanzees, gorillas, you , orangutans use tools.

One of the most famous orangutans was Chantek , who was rejected by his mother as a baby and raised like a human child. Chantek had not only learned the power of a word—that people were quick to give in for a bathroom break—but had also learned how to lie.

The experiences of the researchers at Camp Leakey also helps flesh out the orangutan intelligence profile. The great apes are the smartest of all nonhuman primates, with orangutans and chimpanzees consistently besting monkeys and lemurs on a variety of intelligence tests, Duke University Medical Center researchers have found.

Deaner, Ph. We suspect that this was crucial in human evolution. The study was published online August 1, , in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Funding was provided by the medical center's Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy. Experts in psychology broadly define intelligence as general problem-solving skills -- "domain-general cognition" in the parlance of the field. This intelligence allows an animal to tackle new and unpredictable situations.

Domain-general cognitive ability is separate from domain-specific abilities for solving certain environmental challenges, such as a bird remembering where it cached food. Intelligence testing of animals has repeatedly revealed that some species perform better than others.

This suggests that some animals have better domain-general skills, Deaner said.