Monkey recalls what monkey saw

摘要

Humans can remember information from the past, such as the appearance of a childhood home, but attempts to test this ability in other animals have been hampered by a lack of good testing methods. Now Benjamin Basile and Robert Hampton of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, have designed a touchscreen computer task for rhesus macaques and used it to show that the primates can recall simple shapes from memory. Five male monkeys trained on the computer task were able to fill in blanks on a grid to reproduce previously viewed two- and three-square shapes, demonstrating recall.