Japan's "genius" chimpanzee Ai has died at 49
Ai, a chimpanzee who spent nearly five decades at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute demonstrating that the gap between human and ape cognition is narrower than we like to think, died January 9 of multiple organ failure. She was 49, reports the BBC.
Brought to the institute in 1977, Ai became the first subject of the "Ai Project," a groundbreaking research program studying chimpanzee cognition through computer interfaces. By age five, she could identify Arabic numerals from zero through nine, recognize over 100 Kanji characters and the English alphabet, name 11 colors, and perform single-digit addition with an accuracy rate exceeding 80 percent.
A little more about Ai at the link https://boingboing.net/2026/01/13/japans-genius-chimpanzee-ai-has-died-at-49.html
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