Can Baboons Read? | National Geographic

though they are credited with being
intelligent crafty and adaptable baboons
have frequently found themselves in
direct conflict with human beings by
some they are considered little more
than German but now researchers and
France have concluded that baboons have
the ability to master one of the basic
elements of reading even though the
baboons have no linguistic skills the
monkeys in this study were able to learn
how to tell the difference between
sequences of letters making actual
English words and other nonsense
sequences of letters the baboons live in
a large enclosure and they can enter
testing booths whenever they want a
microchip implanted in their arms allows
the computer to identify the baboon and
launch an appropriate experiment here a
touchscreen presents the letters and a
food dispenser delivers a reward after a
correct response that is the noise you
can hear this baboon is performing the
experiment touching the screen to begin
a test the animal touches the plus sign
if the letters are a non word and the
oval shape if the letters make up a word
this baboon is making correct answers
and gets a reward over a period of a
month and a half the researchers say the
baboons learn to tell dozens of words
apart from more than 7,000 non words
with nearly 75% accuracy the researchers
in Marseille France say their findings
challenge a long-held notion that the
ability to recognize words in this way
is fundamentally related to language
they say it now appears that when humans
read we are partly drawing on an ancient
ability predating the evolution of our
own species
the findings are published in the April
13th 2012 edition of science magazine