Toddlers trounce chimps in test of ‘social learning’

PRE-SCHOOL toddlers show what it means to be human by trouncing apes in tests of social learning skills, scientists revealed yesterday.

Two-year-old humans and chimpanzees both performed basic mental tasks, such as locating “rewards”, using tools and recognising quantities, equally well.

But the children left the chimps, and a group of orang-utans, far behind in more sophisticated tests of the ability to learn from others, communicate, and understand what another individual is thinking.