Genetics could explain about half of the intelligence of chimpanzees.

William Hopkins and his colleagues at Georgia State University in Atlanta used a battery of tests to measure the intelligence of 99 chimpanzees aged 9 to 54 years old. A statistical analysis revealed a correlation between the animals' performance on these tests and their relatedness to other chimpanzees in the study. About half of the difference in performance between individual apes was genetic.

The findings could lead to the discovery of genes linked to intelligence, the authors say.

Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/tn3 (2014)