Certainly not the first and possibly, not even the twentieth. After all, many animals have superior muscle strength and most are better designed for running.

But in a contest where the brain is involved, especially one where the task has something to do with Mathematics, you might think that no animal could get anywhere close to our capability. Surprisingly, here too we have been beaten!

The results of two separate studies, published in the recent months, show that at least in one particular type of mental activity involving numerals, it is the Chimpanzee that gets the gold!

The University of Kyoto, Japan has been engaged in research with the primates. Three adult and three young Chimps here have been trained here to recognize the 9 Arabic numerals (1,2,3…9). The chimps understand numbers and know to put them in the ascending order.

For the experiment, researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa had a computer screen showing the nine numbers in nine separate grids. The chimps were required to touch the numbers on the screen in the ascending order. If they did it right they were rewarded with some eats. All the chimps learnt to do this effortlessly.

In the next level, once gain all the numbers appeared on the screen first. But when number one was touched, all the others disappeared. The Chimp now had to touch the squares where the numbers had been, in the correct order. That is, they had to first to see all the numbers quickly and remember their places. Amazingly, the chimps learnt to do the difficult assignment with the young chimpanzees faring better than their mothers!

The researchers now wanted to see if the human subjects could do this task, as well as the chimps. So they tested the three pairs of mother and infant chimpanzees against university students.

When the original numbers remained on-screen for seven-tenths of a second, the college students did as well as the 5 year old Ayumu, the most prodigious of the chimps. Both had a success rate of 80 percent. But when the numbers flashed for just four-tenths of a second or less, Ayumu's success rate stayed the same, while the students' dropped to 40 percent. Even with six months of training, the students could not beat Ayumu!
The test proved for the first time that Chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection. Dr. Matsuzawa has likened the phenomenon to eidetic or photographic memory.

Following these findings, another test to compare mathematical abilities in primates and humans, was conducted at the Duke's University, Chicago. In this two female chimps were pitted against 14, Duke University students.
The task was to mentally add two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen.

Both chimps and humans typically answered within 1 second!