A Chimp, a Congressional Rep, and a Mirror

Election day photo: chimp art. (Or … holding your Congressional Rep up to a mirror.) No, we didn’t really buy into the old (and false) urban legend that some group of baboons is called a congress. (They’re not. A group of baboons is a troop.) However, Congress is up for election today (when this was originally posted on our IG feed). We’ve done several articles discussing the science around why democracy is important (not everyone in the world believes it is), and are likely to do more in the future. So, if you’re in the US, don’t let the urban legend make a monkey out of you: vote if you’re eligible! (Political science and economics are important applications of data science.

This is Hugo Rheinhold’s famous 19th century sculpture of a politician’s closest living relative, the common chimpanzee. That chimp has political skills! He shares 99% of this DNA with members of Congress — and also all the rest of us. That 1% turns out to be important however: although very bright for animals, chimps have problems grasping the concept of object weight and counting to higher numbers. Humans and chimps are the only known animals to entertain themselves by solving puzzles, but puzzles that are simple for human children will completely stump chimps. Common chimps are also much stronger than humans, but lack fine motor skills. Common chimps are, in our opinion, also more predisposed to violence, as recent evidence suggests humans had to become less aggressive to form societies. Our last common ancestor with chimps was 6 million years ago.

We’re actually continuing here on our art, mirror, and animal consciousness themes. (If you’re talking about elite privilege, perhaps our halloween horror and mirror theme as well.) The chimp, or rather the great apes, are one of the few animals able to recognize themselves in a mirror. This completely stumps most animals (including most monkeys), but chimps will start making funny faces at the mirror pretty quickly (apparently they have a sense of humor, too).

This sculpture is thought to ask profound questions about animal intelligence (since the chimp is contemplating a human skull). It might also touch on the degeneration of extreme rationality into immorality, as would be seen in Europe a few decades after this sculpture was made.

Photo credit: Wikimedia/Jfderry/CC-BY-3