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Ayumu

Ayumu is a memory champion capable of mental feats humans find impossible.

Ayumu is one of 14 chimpanzees, spanning 3 generations, living at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan.

It’s here that institute director Professor Matsuzawa started a hi-tech study of chimp intelligence over 30 years ago. He describes the chimps as his ‘research partners’, but of all the apes here it’s Ayumu that’s proved to be the real genius.

The professor describes him as ‘naughty but harder working than the other juvenile chimps’. Ayumu has excelled at the university and is capable of an incredible mental feat. In just 60 milliseconds, less than the blink of an eye, he can remember the position of nine numbers randomly displayed on a computer screen - something that even the best human minds find impossible.

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