Meet the primate prodigy: Natasha the chimp genius stuns scientists with her human-like levels of intelligence

By Simon Tomlinson

It is widely thought that social intelligence is what really sets humans apart from primates.
But scientists may just have to rethink that view after being introduced to Natasha the 'chimp genius'.
She has astounded researchers with her ability to manipulate situations and communicate with others in her species in a way they have never seen before

At feeding time, the 22-year-old primate has learnt to clap her hands loudly in the hope of gaining attention and extracting more food from her caretakers.

She has also developed a reputation for her playful antics.

One trick she enjoyed pulling off was beckoning visitors towards her and then dousing them with water at the Ugandan Wildlife Sanctuary on Ngamba Island, where she used to live.

Her remarkable behaviour has been analysed by a team from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, which has, for the first time, been able to show that some chimps intuitively understand social situations far better than others.

The researchers studied the abilities of three groups of captive apes, from tool use to social learning and communication, according to The Sunday Times.

Another prodigy: Chimpanzee Ayumu has shown remarkable levels of numerical memory at
the Primate Research Institute that many humans would struggle with

After applying psychometric testing to all the results, Natasha's scores went off the scale.
The findings were revealed in January and will soon be published in a scientific journal.

Jill Pruetz, a biological anthropologist at Iowa State University, told the Sunday Times: 'I am very excited to see this research.

'People who work with apes know that individual differences are evident, but I don't think there has been a systematic examination of this before.

'It will change the way we consider the intelligence of individual chimps in captivity and in the wild.'
Natasha is latest primate prodigy to display human-like levels of intelligence that rival fictional portrayals such as those in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.

Fellow chimp Ayumu was shown to perform numerical memory tests at the primate research facility in Kyoto, Japan, that many of us would find difficult.