Biology 1001A Chapter Notes - Chapter 47.15: Shutterstock, Ultimatum Game, Hominidae
13 Nov 2016
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Humans and chimpanzees share 96% of their genomes. Compared with humans, both chimpanzees and bonobos live in relatively unstructured social groups. The brains of homo sapiens are approximately 3 times as large as those of great apes (ie. chimps) Brain tissue has a very high metabolic rate, so growing and operating a large brain imposes significant costs. Cultural intelligence hypothesis: large brain size in humans reflects cognitive skill sets absent from great apes. Large brains allow humans to perform many cognitive tasks more rapidly and efficiently than other species with smaller brains. To test this, esther herrmann and her colleagues administered a large battery of cognitive tests to chimpanzees, orangutans and two-and-a-half-year-old human children. Although the children, chimpanzees, and orangutans had similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world, the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills for dealing with the social world. *this is important in distinguishing humans from their closest living relatives.
