Natasha, 'Genius Chimp,' Aces Intelligence Tests
I love this story... Further, I'm told chimps have NEVER felt the need to communicate with an empty chair...(they must all be Democrats)
Natasha, a chimp at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, has always seemed different from her peers. She's learned to escape from her enclosure, teases human caretakers, and scores above other chimps in communication tests. Now, Natasha has a new title: genius. In the largest and most in-depth survey of chimpanzee intelligence, researchers found that Natasha was the smartest of the 106 chimps they tested—a finding that suggests that apes have their geniuses, too.
--snip--
Herrmann and her colleagues had previously tested chimps in a study designed to compare the skills of the animals with those of human children. During the study, they noticed a wide range of skills among the chimps and wondered whether they could measure this variation in ability—and whether there were studies that could predict the chimps’ overall performance in all areas, like an IQ test in humans. So they gave a battery of physical and social tests to 106 chimps at Ngamba Island and the Tchimpounga chimpanzee sanctuary in the Republic of the Congo, and to 23 captive chimpanzees and bonobos in Germany. In one experiment, chimps were asked to find food in a container after it had been shuffled around with empty containers. In another, they had to use a stick to get food placed on a high platform. The researchers analyzed the data to determine if the scores in some tests helped predict performance in others.
--snip--
The stand-out individual, Natasha, was the chimp that caretakers—who don’t administer tests to the chimps but do feed them, clean their cages, and accompany them on walks—consistently ranked as the smartest based on only the way she interacted with them. But there's nothing about Natasha's life—extra attention or time spent with humans, for example—that explains how she became so astute. "Motivation and temperament probably play a role," Herrmann says. "That's something that we want to look more into."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/natasha-genius-chimp-intelligence-tests_n_1838963.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Is who the Republican Party should be running! 
ETA - But she looks and 'thinks' like a Progressive and Liberal to me! 
High-five!
The world is only 6,000 years old and chimps aren't related to us.
Humans in general underestimate the intelligence of all other species. Yes, we're dominant in the destruction of the planet department, but the vast majority of other creatures have greater instincts, survival techniques, and intelligence in their own domains than we do. It's arrogant to assume otherwise. We haven't even been on the planet but for a blip in its history and we won't survive our own abuse of the ecosystem. We can't adapt to it. When the next dominant species arises, it will wonder how we even made it through a hot summer or cold winter. I just hope we avoid destroying the entire planet in the mean time.
