Chimp Test

About the Chimp Test

The chimp test is based on a famous experiment in which young chimpanzees outperformed humans at remembering the position of numbers flashed on a screen. Numbers appear scattered on a grid, then turn into blank tiles — your job is to tap them in order, 1, 2, 3 and so on, entirely from memory. Each level adds another number. Three strikes and you're out.

How to play

Press Start. The numbers 1 upward appear in random squares.
Tap the number 1 — the moment you do, every number turns into a blank tile.
Tap the remaining tiles in order from memory: 2, 3, 4 and so on.
Clear a level to add another number. Three mistakes ends the test.

What it measures

This test focuses on your spatial working memory and recall speed. Most people manage around 9 or 10 numbers. The chimpanzees in the original study could hold many positions after just a fraction of a second.

Why play it

Based on the famous Kyoto University chimpanzee memory study
Trains rapid spatial working memory under pressure
Short, addictive rounds that get genuinely hard fast

Did you know?

In the Kyoto University study, a young chimp named Ayumu beat university students at remembering number positions.
The chimps only saw the numbers for as little as 0.2 seconds before they were hidden.
Researchers think young chimps may have a form of eidetic, snapshot-like memory.
Humans tend to do better by counting and verbalising — but that is slower than the chimps' instant snapshot.

What counts as a good score?

Ranges below are drawn from published research — sources are listed at the end of the page.

Level	Numbers on screen	What it means
Developing	4–6 numbers	Roughly where most people start before adapting to how fast the numbers vanish.
Average	7–9 numbers	Typical adult human performance once you have played a few rounds.
Above average	10–12 numbers	Strong spatial chunking, and around the level the Kyoto chimpanzees reached on a comparable task.
Exceptional	13+ numbers	Very rare. Requires taking in the whole grid in a single glance rather than reading it sequentially.

The test recreates the working-memory task from Inoue & Matsuzawa (2007), in which young chimpanzees at Kyoto University outperformed human adults on rapid numerical recall. Bands describe human performance on this format.

How to improve your chimp test score

1.Do not read left to right

The grid vanishes too fast for sequential reading. Defocus slightly and take the whole field in at once — the information is there in one fixation.

2.Lock the first three

Commit 1, 2 and 3 to memory with certainty and let the rest be approximate. A confident start buys you time to reconstruct the tail.

3.Group by region

Remember "4 and 5 are both top-right" rather than two separate coordinates. Regions are cheaper to store than positions.

4.Click faster than feels safe

The trace decays in seconds. Hesitating to double-check costs more than the occasional misclick.

The chimpanzee that beat the humans

In 2007 Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa reported that Ayumu, a young chimpanzee at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, could recall the locations of numerals flashed for a fraction of a second more accurately than human university students. At the shortest exposure — 210 milliseconds, too brief to move your eyes — the humans fell apart and Ayumu did not.

The leading explanation is a trade-off rather than raw superiority: human brains reallocated cortex toward language, and with it a habit of processing symbols sequentially. Chimpanzees never developed that habit and appear to retain a more eidetic, all-at-once grasp of a visual scene. The finding is genuinely contested — critics note the chimps had far more practice than the students — but it has held up across replications.

Frequently Asked

What is the chimp test?

It is a memory game based on a Kyoto University experiment where chimpanzees remembered the positions of numbers on a screen better than humans. You tap numbers in order from memory after they are hidden.

Can humans beat the chimps?

Rarely at the chimps' speed. The young chimpanzees could recall many number positions after seeing them for a fraction of a second — most humans need much longer and still score lower.

What is a good chimp test score?

Reaching 9 or 10 numbers is a solid human score. Getting beyond that consistently is impressive.

Can a chimpanzee really beat me at this?

On the original task, yes — Ayumu outperformed human adults at very short exposure times. The gap narrows considerably with human practice, and some trained humans have matched chimpanzee performance, so treat it as a difference in default strategy rather than a fixed hierarchy.

Why does the test feel impossible at first?

Because the natural approach — reading the numbers in order — cannot work at these exposure times. Almost everyone improves sharply once they stop reading and start taking in the grid as a single image.