A study published in the scientific journal PLoS One on Wednesday suggests that the ability to remember the order of information could be uniquely human, possibly pointing to the root difference between humans and animals.
"The study contributes another piece of the puzzle to the question of how the mental abilities of humans and other animals differ, and why only humans speak languages, plan space travel and have learned to exploit the earth so efficiently," said Johan Lind, Deputy Director at the Centre for Cultural Evolution at Stockholm University and the study's lead author.
In other words, the ability to memorise sequential information could be the evolutionary difference that made humans fundamentally different from animals.
New trial
Previous studies had also reached this same conclusion, but this time the research team tested this hypothesis on humans' closest relatives: apes, specifically bonobos.
"Here, we test the memory for stimulus sequences-hypothesis by carrying out three tests on bonobos and one test on humans," the abstract explains. "Our results show that bonobos' general working memory decays rapidly and that they fail to learn the difference between the order of two stimuli even after more than 2,000 trials, corroborating earlier findings in other animals." On the other hand – and as expected – humans in the trial learned the sequence with ease.
"This may be an ability that sets humans apart from other animals and could be one reason behind the origin of human culture," the abstract concludes.
Related News
- Non-native speakers do not dumb down grammar, new study finds
- New study redefines genetic makeup of 5,300-year-old mummy Ötzi
Greater questions on humanity
The study joins a wider conversation on the origin and identity of humans most recently triggered by the synthetic creation of an early human embryo without the use of sperm, eggs or womb at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Letting the embryo grow into a fully developed baby raises serious ethical concerns and would be illegal in most countries, perhaps because of the yet unanswered question: would it be truly human?
Amidst rapidly increasing technological advancements on clones and artificial intelligence, experts continue to debate what exactly can be defined as 'human'. The study published in PLoS One, however, may have brought us one step closer.
