Monkeys versus Undergraduates

I am home for the holidays and, like most other people, busy running around seeing friends, family, and shopping. However, I’ve run across a couple of interesting articles pitting the cognitive abilities of monkeys against undergraduates. Turns out that the monkeys can hold their own. Fascinating reading for those of you with downtime this holiday season/Winter Break!

Monkeys can do basic math involving sets of dots:

The article: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050328
The press release: http://dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=10200

Monkeys have better numerical memory than humans:

The article: Inouea, S. & Matsuzawaa, T. (2007) Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. Current Biology. 17(23), R1004-R1005.
The writeup: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203094823.htm