Chimpanzees Have Cognitive Skills To Make A Cup Of PG Tips

Chimpanzees could really learn to make a cup of PG Tips tea, scientists have found. Like humans they solve tasks by breaking them down into manageable chunks - just as humans do. The new study, published in the journal PeerJ, suggests that the fundamental abilities underlying human language and technological culture are shared by the apes. Human behaviours are generally more complex than those of other animals, involving the production of elaborate sequences. We break these down into behaviours by hierarchical chunks, and to understand relationships between distantly separated elements. For example, when making a cup of tea we carry out a series of individual actions in the right order like boiling a kettle, getting milk, etc. By studying footage of chimps in Guinea, scientists found the apes could complete tasks with a similar complexity to those humans solve. It means that chimps - like the ones that for many years were the mascots of the PG Tips brand - do display similar thinking patterns to humans when making tea!