Many studies have already been published about the intelligence of different kinds of apes.
A general agreement seems to be that several of those (like the Chimpanzee) have the ability to learn a vast array of skills, like human language (obviously not the speech part, but word recognition etc)...
Now that makes me wonder.
Could he learn to play Go?
Only one way to find out... Who has an intelligent ape laying around and a 9x9 Go board?
Or do you reckon 5x5 is better to start for an ape?
Additional thoughts on ape-instruction
- Let him watch a lot of games on small board. Not especially high level games, just games so he can get sense of the few rules there are.
- Let him play a human player who knows the rules and will take a stone off the board when completely surrounded. If the ape surrounds a stone, point to it.
- That is, assuming the ape will respect the simplest of rules: place a stone on the crossing of 2 lines. If he can't do that, I guess he officially can't play Go. However, we can stimulate this by making dents in the board so the stones fit nicely. Or magnetic stones so they will only lay on the right places.
- Give the ape 1001 Life and Death Problems. After he's finished, his stomach will be filled with Go-wisdom
Though seriously, I think this should be a real study!
.