As we all know, monkeys, as primates, have quick minds and quick reactions. This article will tell you how smart monkeys really are.

The IQ of monkeys is generally equivalent to that of a human being 3-4 years old, and even some particularly intelligent can reach 10 years old. Monkeys can understand written numbers and can even count. Harvard Medical School neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone and colleagues trained three rhesus monkeys for four months. The monkeys were able to effectively add two Arabic numbers and compare the result to a third, separate number.

A rhesus monkey named Johnny, raised by Lindsay Schmidt in Australia on his farm, learned to drive a tractor and listen to simple commands such as "turn right" and "turn left." In addition, monkeys can transmit a variety of diseases to humans, such as: Reston Ebola virus, simian herpes virus type I, monkeypox, yellow fever, simian immunodeficiency virus, tuberculosis and other diseases that are not yet known or identified.

On January 11, 2021, an article was published in the scientific journal of the Royal Society, and the monkeys in Bali, Indonesia are very smart. Monkeys in the place often steal human handbags, hats, glasses, tablets and mobile phones and then try to exchange food. Research has shown that adult wild monkeys are smart enough to recognize items of the highest value to tourists, such as electronic devices, and return them to tourists only after receiving the food they ate. The study authors concluded that this behavior represented an "unprecedented economic decision" in the monkeys.

The researchers, from the University of Lethbridge in Canada and the University of Udayana in Indonesia, observed that in addition to using objects as tools in exchange for rewards for certain types of food, monkeys also improved their trading skills. They argue that there is a clear correlation between value-based communication and the quantity or quality of food in adult and near-adult monkeys with age and experience. According to them, older monkeys often choose high-value items.

Although monkeys are very intelligent, they are very difficult to domesticate. As primates, monkeys are quick-thinking, quick-response, and more active. Therefore, they are reluctant to follow the rules and procedures of training, especially when they are not interested in the training content, they will quickly find ways to escape, or retaliate against the training staff. Coupled with the fact that they jump faster, they can easily dodge when reprimanded by the trainer, which makes it easier to arouse their resistance, thus increasing the difficulty of training.

The monkeys' ingenuity of course also allows them to quickly learn the skills that humans demand from them, but if we ask them to excel at this point, they'll get complacent because of the lack of freshness. This is a common learning problem for all primates, including us.

However, just because monkeys and humans are primates, monkeys have become the first choice of experimental animals in some countries. In the United States, about 55,000 primates are used as test animals each year, while in the United Kingdom, about 10,000 primates are used as test animals, and Japan uses millions of primates as test animals.