Macaque monkeys. Think like humans. |
Humans and monkeys have similar thinking patterns, according to research from UC Berkeley, Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University.
Recursive thinking - a cognitive process of arranging words, phrases or symbols in a way that helps convey complex commands, sentiments and ideas - was thought to be unique to humans - has now been shown to exist in macaque monkeys. This thinking enables us to arrange ideas into nested hierarchies, rather like a linguistic expression of a venn diagram or the nested hierarchies found in cladistics, for example. This ability is crucial to syntax and semantics in human language.