Monkeys Understand Shapes in Almost the Same Way as Humans

You (probably) won’t find a monkey in a geometry class, but it looks like our fellow primates can swing the basics.

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This shared foundation suggests that our geometric intuition evolved long before humans did, which isn’t a surprise to many researchers who study animal cognition.

“These are hardly the only animals on Earth that have to deal with geometry,” said Ed Wasserman, an experimental psychologist at the University of Iowa, who was not involved in the new study.

Many species have been shown to identify objects or patterns even when they are rotated or resized. Pigeons, for example, are even better than humans at some shape-matching tasks, a skill that might help them stay oriented as they fly.

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