Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
According to an article on New Scientist Rhesus macaques are capable of probabilistic thinking:
They can accurately assess which of two behaviours is more likely to bring them a reward by summing together a series of probabilistic clues. And their reasoning is reflected in the firing rate of individual neurons in their brain.Tianming Yang and Michael Shadlen at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington in Seattle, US, tested the reasoning of two rhesus macaques by showing them a series of abstract shapes on a video screen.
Each shape corresponded to a different probability that a drink reward would be associated with a red instead of a green target.
In each trial, the monkey saw a sequence of 4 of 10 possible shapes then, had to choose which target to look at. The probability that the red target would give the reward was the sum of the probabilities for each of the four shapes; otherwise, the green target yielded the drink.
After several weeks of training the monkeys were able to achieve a 75% success rate.
They found that the neurons responded to the first shape by firing at a rate proportional to the probability suggested by that shape. As each successive shape was shown, the firing rate changed to match the probability determined by all the shapes seen so far."We're seeing neurons that are making computations," says Shadlen. In particular, the neurons appeared to be computing the log likelihood ratio of red versus green rewards - exactly the sort of computation a statistician might do.
Not being a neuroscientist, I am unable to really interpret this, other than to point out that these monkeys have apparently achieved the same level of cognitive function and math ability as Dembski and company...
Update 1: Kambiz has more on the subject.
Update 2: Other monkey related science news can be found at Mixing Memory and Pure Pendantry. The later post is more relevant to the above...
Comments
insert cliche comment about insulting Rhesus monkeys
Posted by: kamimushinronsha | June 3, 2007 9:28 PM
Kamimushinronsha, sometimes cliches are true.
Posted by: llewelly | June 3, 2007 9:57 PM
Rhesus macaques are cool, so I did not mean to insult them in any way, shape, or form.
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | June 3, 2007 11:54 PM
Wonder how well I'd have done in the same test. Probably not much worse than the monkeys :)
Posted by: Biswajit | June 4, 2007 2:24 AM