Chimpanzees, alongside gorillas, are generally referred to as the evolutionary distant cousins of humans. They possess higher-than-average intellect compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

However, some chimps are so clever that they were able to outperform college students in a recent experiment concerning short-term memory exams. The said study was conducted by Japan's Kyoto University.

Basically, the experiment involved nine university students, three young chimpanzees and their mother. The test itself required the participants to memorize the location of numbers showed in a computer monitor.

Results indicate that all the young chimpanzees scored higher than all of the human participants with the latter group having an average grade of 40% accuracy. One particular chimp even showed an 80% accuracy rate in the exams.

"A lot of people believe naively that humans are the most intelligent creatures on this planet. I think this research has shown very clearly that they have been proven wrong," commented the university's Primate Research Institute professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa.