Thinking Like A Chimpanzee (Reading Report)

READING REPORT

|Magazine Used |: |Smithsonian magazine, september 2010 |
|Dictionary Used |: |Webster’s NewDictionary-2000 Edition |

Thinking like a Chimpanzee by Jon Cohen

Summary
|The story takes us to the Primate Research Institute inInuyama, Japan, where Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa and other scientists |
|study a community of fourteen chimpanzees to understand the evolution of the human mind. || |
|Matsuzawa and his colleagues study the minds of these primatesthat share with us a common ancestor, thus we will understand |
|what separates us from them. To detect these differences, chimpanzees are evaluated with memory tests and puzzles, making ||possible to study their cognitive limitations. |
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|The fascination that Matsuzawa feels by chimpanzees is transmitted with the mystery that born when he crosses eyes with them. ||Moreover, the results of the experiments suggest that chimpanzees possess understanding and language skills. However, other |
|experts in the field believe that chimpanzees done tests through constantpractice, very far from having genuine mental faculty.|
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|Inaddition to his study, Matsuzawa runs since 1986 a field station in Guinea to study wild chimpanzees. There he focused on |
|what many consider only innate in men: the use of tools. His team has been...