Toddlers vs. Apes: Guess Who Wins in Skills Test

Imoso, the highest-ranking male in the Kanyawara community of Kibale National Park, Uganda, grooms Outamba, a middle-aged female. Male chimpanzees at Kanyawara consistently prefer the oldest females in their community as mating partners, suggesting that the preference that human men exhibit for youthful women is a recent evolutionary phenomenon.

(Image credit: Jean-Michel Krief)

It should come as little surprise that humans are better than apes at learning social skills. But now scientists have shown that even toddlers are better at following directions than their grown-up ape relatives. The research shows that sophisticated social learning skills are a distinctly human trait.

Researchers put 230 subjects—including 100 chimps, 100 2-year-old children and 30 orangutans—through a battery of tests of their physical cognitive skills and their social learning skills.

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Andrea Thompson is an associate editor at Scientific American, where she covers sustainability, energy and the environment. Prior to that, she was a senior writer covering climate science at Climate Central and a reporter and editor at Live Science, where she primarily covered Earth science and the environment. She holds a graduate degree in science health and environmental reporting from New York University, as well as a bachelor of science and and masters of science in atmospheric chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.