Ai, chimpanzee, who could read and identify colours, dies at 49 in Japan
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Ai, chimpanzee, who could read and identify colours, dies at 49 Photograph: (Credit: X)
At the time of her death, she was surrounded by Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior staff members.
A female chimpanzee, who was known for her cognitive skills died at 49. The announcement on Ai came from the Japanese institute where she lived. She breathed her last on Friday (Jan 9) due to organ failure related to old age. At the time of her death, she was surrounded by Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior staff members.
Who is Ai?
Ai in Japanese means love. The chimpanzee was brought to the Japanese institute in 1977, though she was born in western Africa. She became a part of a long-running research programme called the Ai Project which was dedicated to understanding the chimpanzee minds. During this research, it came to the fore that Ai could identify colours and was able to use numbers.
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These were among the notable findings the institute recorded.
Ai could recognize more than 100 Chinese characters and the English alphabet. As reported by news agency AFP, “aside from mastering Chinese characters and the alphabet, shecould also identify the Arabic numerals from zero to nine and 11 colours, primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa said in 2014.”
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"Ai was highly curious and actively participated in these studies, revealing various aspects of the chimpanzee mind for the first time,” the institute mentioned. These studies helped in establishing "an experimental framework for understanding the chimpanzee mind, providing a crucial foundation for considering the evolution of the human mind," the Center added.
In 2000, Ai gave birth to a son, who was named Ayumu, whose abilities drew attention to studies of parent-child knowledge transfer, news outlet Japan's Kyodo News noted.
