Japan’s “genius” chimpanzee has died at 49
Ai, a chimpanzee who spent nearly five decades at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute demonstrating that the gap between human and ape cognition is narrower than we like to think, died January 9 of multiple organ failure. She was 49, reports the BBC.
Brought to the institute in 1977, Ai became the first subject of the “Ai Project,” a groundbreaking research program studying chimpanzee cognition through computer interfaces. By age five, she could identify Arabic numerals from zero through nine, recognize over 100 Kanji characters and the English alphabet, name 11 colors, and perform single-digit addition with an accuracy rate exceeding 80 percent.
In 2000, she gave birth to a son, Ayumu, who would go on to embarrass our species in memory tests. When shown sequences of numerals flashed on screen for a fraction of a second, young chimps, including Ayumu, recalled the sequences with extraordinary accuracy — outperforming adult human participants.
Ai also painted and drew for the sheer pleasure of it, creating art without any food reward. And in 1989, she escaped her enclosure with another chimp by picking the padlock with a key — a detail the researchers only pieced together afterward. She spent 47 years teaching humans about the minds of our closest relatives, and apparently kept a few secrets to herself.
obituaries, science, chimpanzees, animal cognition, Japan