The stuff I'm reading about chimps shows their level of cognition is way above just a wild animal. Examples of what they are capable of:
How can we assess chimp intelligence?
- they make tools and use them to acquire foods, for social displays, etc
- they have sophisticated hunting strategies that require cooperation, and allow animals to achieve influence and rank by sharing meat
- they are highly status conscious and manipulative, capable of deception
- they are analytical and problem-solvers, clearly capable of insight and complex "cognitive performance" in both the wild and in captivity, and particularly adept at analyzing relative relationships
- language experiments have shown that chimps are creative, can learn to use symbols (and teach them to others) and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence
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