Chimpanzees and orangutans were able to remember past events when presented with sensory reminders, a new study shows.

It is  time that  humanity  understand  once  and  for all that  we  are  all creatures  of this  Earth and as  such are  ALL deserving of  respect  and concern. 

The  results of this  study  are  not really  news  to  those of  us   who have  known  all along that Mankind  is  not superior  to  other  creatures on this  planet.  It is  however, a  wake up call to all those  who have   for  so  long  believed  and  lived  their lives behaving  as  if  they are God's gift to this  planet. 

A study has shown for the first time that chimps and orangutans remembered events from three years earlier

With the  revelations made  here can  anyone honestly  say  that animal  testing  is humane or even ethical? 

To those who have always based  their acquiescence to  vivisection and  the like with the  off the  cuff  statement....."They are  just  dumb animals".

It  appears  that  the only  dumb  animals  involved  are  the  two legged  variety that believe  themselves   above  reproach and entitled to mistreat  and  torture other  creatures under the  guise  of  superiority........

~Desert Rose~
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WIRED

Chimps, Orangutans Have Human-Like Memories

• By Virginia Morell, ScienceNOW
• 07.19.13

An orangutan at the Leipzig Zoo uses a tool to explore a puzzle. In a different test, this ape as well as three other orangutans and eight chimpanzees remembered the details of a similar task for three years. Image: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

A single cue—the taste of a madeleine, a small cake, dipped in lime tea—was all Marcel Proust needed to be transported down memory lane. He had what scientists term an autobiographical memory of the events, a type of memory that many researchers consider unique to humans. Now, a new study argues that at least two species of great apes — chimpanzees and orangutans — have a similar ability; in zoo experiments, the animals drew on 3-year-old memories to solve a problem. Their findings are the first report of such a long-lasting memory in nonhuman animals. The work supports the idea that autobiographical memory may have evolved as a problem-solving aid, but researchers caution that the type of memory system the apes used remains an open question.
Elephants can remember, they say, but many scientists think that animals have a very different kind of memory than our own. Many can recall details about their environment and routes they’ve traveled. But having explicit autobiographical memories of things “I” did, or remembering events that occurred in the past, or imagining those in the future—so-called mental time travel—are considered by many psychologists to be uniquely human skills.
Until recently, scientists argued that animals are stuck in time, meaning that they have no sense of the past or future and that they aren’t able to recall specific events from their lives—that is, they don’t have episodic memories, the what-where-when of an event that happened.

Yet, several studies have shown that even jays have something like episodic memory, remembering when and where they’ve hidden food, and that rats recall their journeys through mazes, and use these to imagine future maze-travels. “There is good evidence challenging the idea that nonhuman animals are stuck in time,” says Gema Martin-Ordas, a comparative psychologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and the lead author of the new study. But trying to show that apes also have a conscious recollection of autobiographical events is “the tricky part,” Martin-Ordas admits.
To see if chimpanzees and orangutans have autobiographical memories that can later be triggered with a cue (as were Proust’s by eating the pastry), Martin-Ordas and two other researchers devised a memorable event for the apes at the Leipzig Zoo. In 2009, eight chimps and four orangutans individually watched Martin-Ordas place a piece of a banana on a platform attached to the outside of a caged testing room. The apes could get the treat only by reaching through a slot with a long stick. The researcher then hid two sticks, only one of which was long enough to reach the banana. The animals watched as she hid each tool in a box in two different rooms. The chimp or orangutan observing her actions was then released into the area with the hidden tools. They had to find the correct tool, return to the room with the tempting banana, and use the tool to retrieve the treat.
Each ape took the test four times. “We set it up to see if cues—like Proust’s madeleine—would trigger a memory event for them,” Martin-Ordas says. But instead of using a single cue like a scent or a taste, the researchers offered the apes “a constellation of cues: me, the room, and the specific problem,” Martin-Ordas says. They hoped that this combination would act as a trigger—that whenever the chimpanzees encountered this specific task with Martin-Ordas again, they would remember that they needed to search for the correct tool.



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