The Chimpanzee that can remember numbers faster than you: Primate can solve puzzle in the blink of an eye

The Chimpanzee that can remember numbers faster than you: Primate can solve puzzle in the blink of an eye - A chimp raised in captivity in Japan has been trained to perform feats of memory most humans would find impossible.

Ayumu has been called the world's greatest animal mind, and can easily out-perform humans in a series of memory tests.

Ayumu is the son of Ai, a chimpanzee whose intelligence has been studied for over 30 years by Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa.

Ayumu the chimp can remember the location and order of a set of numbers in less time than it takes the average human to blink

The 11-year-old chimp was born at the Kyoto University in 2000, and he has studied at the Primate Research Institute there ever since as part of the Ai Project, which aims to better understand the chimpanzee mind.

His particular skill is remembering where a series of numbers are placed on a screen, and then recalling them perfectly after only the briefest periods of time to memorise them.

At age five Ayumu had already out-smarted the professors who had set him his intelligence tasks.

Now age 11 he is performing feats of memory the vast majority of humans could not even attempt to complete.

Ayumu memorises the numbers and their locations in less than half a second, which is faster than the blink of an eye.

For those who are sceptical, if Ayumu was to just make a lucky stab at the numbers, the likelihood of him getting it right by mere guesswork are one in 362,000.

Ayumu the chimp can solve the puzzle in 60 milliseconds, at Kyoto University, Japan

His latest feats have been highlighted in a BBC and Discovery Channel co-production called Super Smart Animals.

Ayumu is no stranger to British TV screens however and was also featured in a Channel Five programme called Extraordinary Animals in 2008.

In that show the male chimp, then aged seven, took on British memory champion Ben Pridmore in a series of contests, and beat him easily.

He did three times as well as Mr Pridmore at remembering the position of numbers on a screen.

And that's no mean feat considering the accountant from Derby was capable of memorising the order of a shuffled pack of cards in under 30 seconds. ( dailymail.co.uk )