Something fun I read:
"Japanese researchers have found three young chimps that can beat people at a numerical memory task. ...a game that involved touching numbers from 1 to 9 in the correct order. The numbers were randomly scattered across a computer screen [and then hidden]. ...The chimps had to realise that if there was no 3 for example, then 4 was the next in the sequence after 2. ...The performance of the best chimp did not drop off even when it was given a fraction of a second [210ms] to remember where the numbers were - suggesting it has an ability akin to photographic memory. ...Top of the class among the chimps was Ayumu, who got the number order correct 80% of the time when the digits appeared on screen for just two tenths of a second. That compared with a 40% success rate for the humans."
Guardian.co.uk
BBC news segment
longer video. Here they are shown to understand the meaning of some Chinese characters and the Arabic numerals. During the memory test one turned away for 9 seconds to check out some noise outside but still remembered the ordering afterwards:
chimps beat humans at memory game
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee