Hi all! Calvin here. I’m still fairly new here at the research facility, and I’m constantly amazed by JJ. He’s such a fascinating chimp. One of the things that really strikes me is his memory. It’s… uncanny. Before I came along, JJ used to watch a lot of television. I know, it sounds strange, but apparently, the previous caregiver let him watch educational programs and nature documentaries. When I started, I thought it was important to wean him off the screen time. I mean, how much could he really be retaining? I figured he’d forget about it pretty quickly.
It’s been months since the TV was removed, and JJ still remembers things he saw on those programs. It’s not just a vague recognition. He’ll react to certain sounds or images that were featured in the shows, sometimes even mimicking behaviors he saw the animals doing. It’s like he has a mental library of everything he’s ever seen. We do memory tests with the chimps here, of course. We use all sorts of methods, like showing them a sequence of symbols and then asking them to recreate it or hiding objects and seeing how long it takes them to find them again. Chimpanzees, in general, have pretty good memories. They need to in the wild to remember where food sources are, which other chimps are friends or foes, and so on.
But JJ’s memory is on a whole different level. He excels at all the standard memory tasks, often surpassing the other chimps by a significant margin. He remembers things for far longer than we’d expect, and he seems to make connections between things that other chimps don’t. It’s like his brain is wired differently. It makes me wonder about the impact of that television watching, even though I still think it’s best he’s not watching it anymore. Could it have somehow enhanced his cognitive abilities? Or was he just exceptionally gifted to begin with? It’s a puzzle, and JJ is definitely the most intriguing piece. He makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about chimpanzee intelligence and memory.
— Calvin Poe