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Virtual Reality and Chimpanzees

posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the owned-by-a-chimpanzee dept.
Science

hubie writes:

"An article in the American Journal of Primatology looks at comparing the spatial cognitive abilities between chimpanzees and humans by presenting them a virtual reality environment and seeing how well they can navigate mazes. The goal was "to determine how efficiently chimpanzees could navigate and whether chimpanzees performance in a virtual 3D environment presented on a 2D medium (a computer screen) would differ from that of human performance." The virtual reality environment looked a lot like something out of Wolfenstein 3D. Based upon the small sample of subjects used, the outcome is that the chimpanzee took about as much time as the 3 to 12 year olds to complete the mazes, but ended up taking significantly shorter paths than either the human children or adults in the study."

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:15PM (#15597)

    It's finally proven that a trained monkey IS better.

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday March 13 2014, @01:08AM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday March 13 2014, @01:08AM (#15645)

      Only at certain tasks, such as solving mazes, finding bananas, riding a tricycle, running a business, or holding political office.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

      • (Score: 1) by captain normal on Thursday March 13 2014, @05:57AM

        by captain normal (2205) on Thursday March 13 2014, @05:57AM (#15725)

        You left out CEO of major corporations.

        --
        Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--

      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday March 14 2014, @09:48PM

        by Common Joe (33) <common.joe.0101NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday March 14 2014, @09:48PM (#16646) Journal

        Only at certain tasks, such as solving mazes, finding bananas, riding a tricycle, running a business, or holding political office.

        Chimps running for an office? I'd vote for them in a heartbeat. I'd even pay money to watch them fling poo at the other non Chimpanzee office holders during session. Hmmm... I think I found a way to solve the national deficit.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by AnythingGoes on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:22PM

    by AnythingGoes (3345) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:22PM (#15599)
    It might be that 3D processing is better for chimps because they are up in the trees more often than us ground pounders... OTOH, it is only 1 female chimpanzee that seems to perform much better than everyone, so maybe they should test that chimp's native intelligence? :)

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by wjwlsn on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:38PM

      by wjwlsn (171) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:38PM (#15607) Homepage Journal

      Maybe send her to college for a STEM degree of some kind and see if she sticks with that degree program despite the occasional bad grade (assuming that she doesn't ace every damn course).

      --
      I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.

      • (Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:56PM

        by EvilJim (2501) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:56PM (#15614) Journal

        Dammit, where are my mod points today? +1 funny/insightful to you good sir

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Geotti on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:41PM

    by Geotti (1146) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:41PM (#15609) Journal

    Next time I'm replacing my crowd-sourcing algorithms for arising travelling salesman problems with a chimpanzee, an oculus rift and an API.
    Heck, I think I got a business idea...

    • 1. Get an oculus rift and a chimpanzee.
    • 2. Make a leet^H^H^H^Hhip new RoR API in the cloud
    • 3. ???
    • 4. Profit.

    • (Score: 1) by captain normal on Thursday March 13 2014, @06:06AM

      by captain normal (2205) on Thursday March 13 2014, @06:06AM (#15732)

      Makes a lot of sense to me. Was it H. L. Mencken who said. "No one ever went broke underestimation the intelligence of the American public"?

      --
      Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by lentilla on Thursday March 13 2014, @02:22AM

    by lentilla (1770) on Thursday March 13 2014, @02:22AM (#15654)

    Why did they go to the trouble of making something "a lot like" a first person shooter? Just let them play them play Wolfenstein 3D.

    This should have two benefits:

    1. The study will be eligible for a grant from the Department of Defence.
    2. Some starlet at PETA will get naked as a result.

    Seems to be a win both ways...

  • (Score: 1) by ticho on Thursday March 13 2014, @06:51AM

    by ticho (89) on Thursday March 13 2014, @06:51AM (#15746) Homepage Journal

    You _know_ the chimps will just be killed off after they get really good. We've seen this before [wikipedia.org].

  • (Score: 1) by LordFrito on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:13AM

    by LordFrito (3821) on Thursday March 13 2014, @11:13AM (#15797)

    If Hollywood has taught me anything, it's that chimps + VR = UberChimps [youtube.com].

    This will not end well.

    • (Score: 1) by thoughtlover on Thursday March 13 2014, @08:34PM

      by thoughtlover (3247) on Thursday March 13 2014, @08:34PM (#16074) Journal
      Long before The Lawnmower Man, there was Project X [imdb.com], which is what I really thought someone was gonna mention. Maybe I'm dating myself...