Study shows primates can remember past events like humans do

July 18, 2013 at 7:05 PM

AARHUS, Denmark, July 18 (UPI) -- Chimpanzees and orangutans can remember distant past events, showing their memory is more like that of humans than previously thought, Danish researchers say.

Scientists at Aarhus University say in laboratory tests both primate species were clearly able to recollect a tool-finding event that they had experienced just four times 3 years earlier and a singular event from two weeks before.

"Our data and other emerging evidence keep challenging the idea of non-human animals being stuck in time," researcher Gema Martin-Ordas said.


Reporting in the journal Current Biology, the researches said the chimpanzees and orangutans in the study could also distinguish between similar past events in which the same tasks, locations, and people were involved.

"This is a crucial finding since it implies that our subjects were able to bind the different elements of very similar events -- including task, tool, experimenter," Martin-Ordas said. "This idea of 'binding' has been considered to be a crucial component of autobiographical memories."

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