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Noah Wissel
Dr. Cassel
Eng 101E-000
29 September 2016

Who is smarter?

There is one animal that is thought to be as smart if not smarter than humans. This is the
same animal that is always able to make humans laugh and trick them. Monkeys. For example,
Dexter in Night at the Museum is always thinking quicker than the night guard by taking his
keys and peeing on him. It shows his intelligence when he tricks him. See, intelligence isnt just
being able to do math, its measured by many other things. Are monkeys really smarter than us?
Although research shows that monkeys have similar intelligence to humans for certain tasks,
when it comes to looking at their social interaction with each other, humans are much more
evolved.
Monkeys have been studied for centuries now and are still being studied to see how their
brains compare to the human brain. When comparing the difference between monkeys
intelligence to humans, researchers look at cognitive testing. This is relating to the mental
processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and
volitional (an act of making a choice or decision) processes. It looks at multiple aspects of
intelligence. Much research is just experts, such as scientists, biologists and researchers
observing how monkeys react to situations and tasks that humans are faced with and how they
react. From there they make a conclusion based on their observations.

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The biological gap between us and our great ape cousins, monkeys, is small. At last
count, only 1.23 percent of our genes differ from those of chimpanzees (Rubin). But mentally,
the gap between humans and monkeys is like the Grand Canyon. We comprise thousands of
patents, post numerous numbers of videos, and think countless thoughts that have never been
thought before. On a good day, chimpanzees are lucky to exploit rudimentary techniques, such as
using stone tools to crack nuts. Not only do humans innovate more than the other apes, they are
vastly better at sharing ideas with one another. The majority of recent behavioral studies focus on
information-transmission rather than invention. All of the great apes can learn new tricks by
imitating a human or another ape. But only humans go one step further and routinely teach each
other (Rubin).
Teaching may be the signature skill of our species, and researchers are now zeroing in on
three particular mental talents that make it possible. Humans are exceptionally skilled at
thinking about what's on other people's minds. A teacher, for example, needs to understand what
a student knows and doesn't know. Researchers used to believe that chimpanzees lacked this
talent entirely. Recent experiments are showing that chimps share at least a bit of this skill but,
humans are clearly head and shoulders above the great apes in mind-reading savvy (Rubin).
Humans and monkeys learn differently, as well, which is why there is a difference in
intelligence. Research shows that humans are more intelligent because of their social cognition,
being able to pick out ideas, and gestures and then do them. They are relatively equal in the
amount of social cognition they each experience. The tasks the monkeys and toddlers had to do
included learning to open a tube by watching somebody. Other skills in which children were
superior to apes included communicating with gestures to get a treat, judging when any someone
was paying attention, following the experimenter's gaze to locate a treat, and judging what the

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experimenter was trying (and failing) to do (Apes vs. Toddlers). And while it may seem that the
human children had an advantage because they were interacting with another human, other
studies have shown that apes don't perform any better or worse on similar tasks when dealing
with another ape. Humans' superior social cognition may have helped create human civilization
and technology, allowing us to share knowledge easily and pass it on to future generations (Apes
vs. Toddlers).

(Sloan)
In the cartoon by Sloan, he makes you think that monkeys are more intelligent than
humans because they know how to spell and humans cant because they rely on spellcheck.
Sloan is a well published and professional cartoonist. He has done cartoons for numerous big
name clients such as: Sesame Street, HBO, Nickelodeon, Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room,
Burger King, and McDonalds.
Apes can be very human-like. For example, tickling a juvenile chimpanzee is like
tickling a child. The ape has the same sensitive spots: under the armpits, on the side, in the belly.
He opens his mouth wide, lips relaxed, panting out loud in the same rhythm of laughter as
human's. The ape also shows the same contradictory attitudes towards people or objects as a

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child. He pushes tickling fingers away and tries to escape, but as soon as the tickling stops he
comes back for more, putting his belly right out front (De Waal). This aspect of the monkey
makes researchers wonder if they are as smart as humans if they act the same about something so
big in human life, laughing.
There was also a comparison between the performance of 2-year-old human children and
an adult monkey on a process of knowing/perceiving something based on an imitation task. Their
task was to respond in a certain order, to sets of pictures on a touch sensitive monitor. The
position of the list of items was varied from trial to trial so the subjects (monkeys and humans)
couldn't memorize the series of responses. Sometimes the subjects had no knowledge of the
position of the images before-hand and other times they would give the subjects a model before
the tasks. Both the monkeys and the humans learned much quicker when they had a chance to
observe an expert model before doing the task, rather than a baseline condition where they have
to do the task by trial and error (Subiaul). There were no differences observed between the
accuracy of the species' responses during the tasks. Although there was no difference in
accuracy, they did have differences in mistakes and techniques in completing the tasks which
makes researchers wonder how well this shows intelligence considering it was also a human
child and adult monkey.
Monkeys and humans have always gotten along and enjoyed each others company. For
example, in Night at the Museum Dexter and the night guard are always annoying each other
but at the end Dexter helps him catch the robbers and they grow a friendship that lasts forever.
This topic still has a lot of research that can happen to answer this question accurately but so far
research shows that monkeys have similar intelligence to humans for certain tasks, when it
comes to looking at their social interaction with each other, humans are much more evolved.

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Works Cited
"Apes vs. Toddlers." Science Netlinks. AAAS, 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
De Waal, Frans. What I Learned From Tickling Apes. New York Times, 8 Apr. 2016.
Rubin, John. "The Gap Between Humans and Apes." PBS. PBS, 2008. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.
Sloan, Tom. "Humans Cant Spell. Do Monkeys Spellcheck?" Anewdomain.net. Anewdomain,
25 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Oct. 2016.
Subiaul, Francys, et al. "Cognitive Imitation In 2-Year-Old Children (Homo Sapiens): A
Comparison With Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca Mulatta)." Animal Cognition 10.4 (2007):
369-375. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.