A New App Asks “Are You Smarter Than An Ape?”

In the reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, scientists try to cure Alzheimer’s disease with a drug that leads to the dramatic increase of intelligence in a chimpanzee. Of course, in real-life that sort of thing wouldn’t happen, but it has been proven that chimps are pretty smart already. A new app released by Fox Mobile Entertainment, Inc. wants humans to test their mental ability and find out if they’re smarter than an ape. Find out how after the break.

The app titled Apes Will Rise, is available for free download in the Apple App Store for iOS mobile devices and allows you to challenge yourself in a short-term memory test designed by scientists at Kyoto University. In the game, you’ll take the same test, and you can take it on three levels: easy, medium and the highest being at the speed of an ape. In the experiment conducted by Kyoto University, Japanese researchers tested young chimpanzees against university students. The task: remember the location of the numbers 1-9 on a screen and correctly recall the location of the numbers after they’d been covered by a blank square. The chimps completed the task much faster than the humans, proving that humans are not superior to chimps in all cognitive functions.

Other features of the app include:

• The latest videos from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes YouTube channel
• Watch the latest trailers and learn more about the film
• Buy tickets for the movie (When they become available)
• Learn more about the history of ape intelligence tests

Are you smarter than an ape? Let us know in the comments below! Rise of the Planet of the Apes hits theaters August 5th.