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Are you smarter than a chimpanzee?

Recently, researchers have reported surprising news: Chimpanzees may be more intelligent than humans–or at least they may have better short-term memories! When chimpanzees played the game below against Japanese college students, the chimps did better than the humans, at least at the harder levels of the game.

So now it's your turn. Play the game below to see whether you are smarter than a chimpanzee! The chimps were able to beat the game 80% of the time, even at 0.2 seconds! Can you?

Instructions

  • Click the "Start New Game" button to begin.
  • The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 will appear in the grid below. Memorize their locations.
  • After two seconds, the numbers will disappear. Below the game, you will find an option to shorten this time.
  • Try to click the five white boxes in the order they were numbered.
  • When you are done, click "Start New Game" to try again!

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Attempts Successes Success Rate Chimp's Rate
Easy (2 secs) 0 0 0 % n/a
Moderate (0.7 secs) 0 0 0 % 80 %
Hard (0.4 secs) 0 0 0 % 80 %
Very Hard (0.2 secs) 0 0 0 % 80 %
Insane (0.1 secs) 0 0 0 % n/a

About this Game

Chimpanzees and human volunteers (mostly college students) played exactly the games you just played. At 0.7 seconds, chimps and humans were both about 80% accurate. But at 0.2 seconds, humans were only 40% accurate--even though chimps remained 80% accurate! Even the researchers were surprised by this finding. It implies that chimps either have better short term memories, or that they are better at taking in large amounts of information at a glance.

Further reading: