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Our chimpanzee mind

Nature volume 437, pages 60–63 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Some might consider the title of this piece preposterous. Bishop Wilberforce would no doubt have shaken his fist at it, just as he disputed Huxley's championing of darwinian continuity. But the title of this essay is no more outrageous than one entitled ‘The chimpanzee's bird brain’, for there has been extensive evolutionary conservation of many neural and psychological functions across species. We share with chimpanzees some—but not all—mental functions, some of which are shared with other species as well. As the publication of the chimpanzee genome reveals, we also share a good deal of our DNA. Unfortunately, we are virtually in the dark when it comes to understanding how genes build minds. If comparative genomics is to enlighten our understanding of human origins, it must be accompanied by an equally rich description of animal psychology, both in terms of its underlying neural signatures and the evolutionary processes that led to convergence and divergence with other species.

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Figure 1: Dangerous encounters.
Figure 2: The responses of chimpanzee Ai to a serial order task involving Arabic numerals.
Figure 3: Three conditions designed to test what chimpanzees know about seeing.

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Acknowledgements

For support during the writing of this article, I wish to thank the McDonnell Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and a National Science Foundation ROLE grant.

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  1. Departments of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, Massachusetts, 02138, Cambridge, USA

    Marc Hauser

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  1. Marc Hauser
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Correspondence to Marc Hauser.

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Hauser, M. Our chimpanzee mind. Nature 437, 60–63 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03917

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