Given that humans have a wide iq range, 80-120 ion average, with many lows and highs up to near 200, would it be possible that a Chimpanzee could each lower level human intelligence due to a very high Chimp iq? In other words, could their be an Einstein Chimp and would we notice?
Judging by some of the questions I have seen here over the years, I am certain of it.
However, why would a super-chimp approach human abilities? The Einstein chimp would most likely be the best at flinging poo, or does a kick-ass dominance display, or otherwise performs those behaviours important to chimps better than other members of the tribe.
I think the problem is that chimps and humans are ultimately too different. Even if a chimp has an Einstein IQ in relations to chimps, how would that come across to humans. I doubt we would be able to recognize it, seeing as we test chimps in a small subset of their cognitive ability.
I agree. Intelligence is not simply a scale - it has numerous forms, as well as amounts. A severely low-IQ human being will not act anything like an animal, no matter how bright that animal may be. And the human brain must be close to nonfunctional before it loses the ability to understand limited amounts speech, while it’s an effort to teach any animal.
All of that is true, but compare the abilities of a low iq human to a high iq human and extrapolate to a chimp. Also, the behavioral differences between the two susbsets means that being the best at flinging poo, or does a kick-ass dominance display would not match up to human differences. Most 180 iq people act far differently than 80 iq people, not just better at what 80 iq people can do.
Alaso, while it’s an effort to teach any animal, that is in fact not really true. There is a border collie that allegedly understands 1,500 words. Chimps are far smarter. So given my super chimp who knows.
The most superior falcon in the world will not be able to dabble like a duck, nor should it be expected to.
We are rather partial to our language-and-tools skills. This does not mean that even our closest relatives are on the same spectrum of abilities, and so a chimp at the far end of what we measure as “IQ” is going to be an accomplished chimp, not a low-grade imitation human.
So maybe we wouldn’t call it a “high IQ” chimp. Given the relatively recent common ancestry of chimps and humans, is it possible that some chimps have more human-like minds than others (or some humans have more chimp-like minds than others)? And could there thus be an outlier chimp that thought unusually similar to a human, regardless of how “smart” it was by human or chimp standards?
Didn’t this happen back in 1973? 
Only if the chimp acquired the same mutations that lead to human intelligence or if the human lost those mutations somehow. Although socialization is critical for the development of intelligence in both species, the genes define what is ultimately possible.
I suspect that in the next decade or so we will know specifically what those genes are and have a rough idea at least of what they do. That will make this sort of discussion very interesting indeed!
If it happened, we almost certainly would not notice. Scientists had white mice in their laboratories for decades before someone noticed they “sing” in subsonic frequencies. We are largely blind to the potentialities of other humans, let alone animals.
Sometimes in experiments chimps (or usually bonobos, I think) do exhibit certain forms of intelligence that are like our own.
Like the chimp who came up with the idea to get to the peanut in the tube by sucking water from the drinking spout and spitting into the tube to get the peanut to float to the top. I’m pretty sure (most of) the developmentally disabled kids I worked with could not come up with that solution. So we might say that for a particular way of problem solving some chimps can approach human intelligence.
Another bonobo I saw in a documentary used one of those boards to communicate. She was trained to keep a cat as a pet. One day, she had a tantrum and ripped the sink of the wall and flung it across the room. When she had cooled down the keepers went in to talk to her and on her board she pressed “not me, naughty cat did it”. Again, it seems like a kind of intelligence specific to humans (I think you need a certain concept of the consciousness of others) and I know developmentally disabled kids who couldn’t do that.
I think if you look on a broader scale though, you might find that chimps or bonobos don’t exhibit all different expressions of human intelligence? I don’t know.
Whatever else he could do, Einstein Chimp would make an excellent lead singer for an eponymous band.
I’m guessing that was Kanzi, but I can guarantee you she did not sign in a subject-verb-object sentence like that. Probably the “did it” is inferred, if you remembered correctly.
Another difficulty: The population of humans is much higher than that of chimps, so we’ll have more outliers, and more extreme ones. Einstein’s intelligence is perhaps at a level that one human in 50 billion would have. For a comparable (relatively speaking) chimp, you’d expect to have to wait millennia to find one.
Google Kanzi the Bonobo; he can start fires, communicate and win at Pac Man.
I don’t think that being able to start fires after being taught how to is all that remarkable. Kanzi is indeed a smart Bonobo, but the fire starting stunt is just good animal training.
Even as Uggie the dog can walk like a man, perhaps into hot dog vendor’s establishment.
That just means the cats are diversifying.
Severely low IQ humans might not act like animals, but children were are severely mistreated and left alone will indeed act like animals; some maybe not even up to the level of a bright, well-trained Border Collie.
I was thinkning as I read the OP, “Given a HUMAN Einstein, would we necessarily recognize that person.”
I can imagine an alternate-ending universe in which Einstein was never recognized for his abilities, or was captured and tortued by Nazis and when he breaks out of the evil doctor’s torture-lab he is so twisted that he uses his skills to go back in time to kill Hitler, but he miscalculates the exponent and instead kills Churchill and when he returns to this time he has to be Churchill so he can’t produce general relativity… but someone else does.
Point being that, I believe, if we could test every animal, we would find some that would be able to pass a rudimentary IQ test given an appropriate amount of teaching (distinct from training where an animal is conditioned).
Obvioiusly that is an untestable opinion, but the “would we notice” question in the OP calls for a ceratin amount of speculation.
I’m sure you’re right, yeah, it was ages ago I saw the documentary. Sorry about that.
But I wasn’t really referring to the use of language, more to the fact that she understood the concept of lying: information that she has, other don’t necessarily have so you can convince them of something else, and that can be advantageous to you.
Yes, that’s called “Theory of Mind”, and not many non-human animals seem to have it.