Until now, man has always be-lieved that he is the smartest ape on the block. But scientists claim to have proved that chimpanzees are brighter in some departments. Re-search suggests that young chimps are blessed with photographic memories, allowing them to remember patterns and sequences with amazing accuracy. As a result, they often outdo their human cousins at memory games, completing them more quickly and with fewer mistakes.

截至目前為止，人類一直相信自己是最聰明的「猴崽子」。但科學家聲稱，已經證明黑猩猩在某些方面比人類聰明。研究顯示，小猩猩記憶力驚人，這使牠們得以極端精確地記住圖案和數字順序。結果，牠們在玩記憶遊戲時往往勝過人類，不但比人更快完成，錯誤也較少。

The researchers, from Kyoto Uni-versity in Japan, pitted six chimps - three mother and child pairs - a-gainst a group of university students. The chimps had already been trained to recognise the numbers from one to nine and place them in sequence. In tests involving flashing numbers on a screen, then covering them in white squares, the chimps were faster at pointing out which number had been where. The researchers now plan to see how the young chimps fare against children.

日本京都大學研究人員把由三對母子組成的六隻黑猩猩，和大學生舉行比賽。黑猩猩已經接受訓練會認1到9共九個數字並按順序排列。這次測試先在電腦螢幕上閃現這九個數字，再以白色方塊蓋住。黑猩猩比人更迅速按順序指出什麼數字在哪裡。研究人員現在計畫看看小猩猩對兒童表現如何。

One of the chimps studied, a five-year-old male called Ayumu, did twice as well as men and women at the taskn. Researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa said: "There are still many people, including many biolo-gists, who believe that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cog-nitive functions. Here we show for the first time that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollectione." Photo shows chim-panzee Ayumu begins a memory test with nine numerals placed in various positions on a touch sensitive moni-tor Dec. 13, 2006.

其中一隻接受測驗的黑猩猩是五歲大的Ayumu，牠比男女受測者要快兩倍。研究人員松澤哲郎說：「還是有很多人，包括很多生物學家，他們相信人類在所有認知功能上都強過黑猩猩，但我們在這裡首次證明，年幼的黑猩猩的數字記憶驚人。」圖為黑猩猩Ayumu去年12月13日正要開始接受記憶電腦螢幕上放在不同位置的九個連續數字的實驗。