GENDER AND SPECIES DIFFERENCESdogs were tested in pairs and only one dog was rewarded with treats, the
unrewarded dog stopped playing along. In fact, the dog that was treated
unfairly shook paws fewer times than when both dogs had performed
the task together without any treats. In other words, dogs are happier to
perform for no reward than to perform when another dog is getting a
reward, but they aren’t.
When it comes to animals behaving in what we consider to be a
human-like fashion, surely the example to trump them all is a study
from Georgia State University in Atlanta. Here in 2007 Michael Beran
and his colleagues set up some apparatus in which a jar continued filling
with sweets until a chimp grabbed and took it. You’d think the chimps
would lack the restraint to wait very long before making a greedy lunge.
This was certainly the case when there was no distraction. Amazingly,
however, when the researchers provided some toys, the chimps played
with these and were able to wait for much longer before grabbing the jar,
thereby gaining more sweets. It’s not that the toys themselves were an
irresistible lure. If the jar was put out of reach, the chimps didn’t bother
playing with the toys nearly as much. It seems they really were using
them as a form of self-distraction.
Not content with showing that animals are often able to match human
mental ability, a recent study went further and provided an example of
human intelligence being surpassed. Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Boy and chimpanzee studying a leaf together.