Chimpanzee and Mimicry

Welcome back to JJNN.

Today's article is from the Yomiuri Online.

For years it has been said that chimpanzees in the wild have the ability to mimic each other, but that has never been tested scientifically. That is, until now. A team from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute along with a team from Oxford University have set up an experiment to see if chimpanzees will actually mimic each other in an laboratory environment.

The experiment is simple. It used two chimpanzees, a mother and son pair named Ai and Ayumu respectively. The researchers set up two stations with two monitors each. The stations are separated by 2 meters (6.6 feet). One of the chimpanzees would press a button on there screen (the buttons are separated by color or by symbol) and the other chimpanzee would watch that and push the same button on their monitor. They did this 78 to 87 percent of the time.

The chimpanzees at their stations.

It is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 霊長類(れいちょうるい). It is pronounced reichourui and it means primate.