section_path: Behavior/Intelligence and cognition
section_name: Intelligence and cognition
paragraph_text: Intelligence and cognition
  
  Primates have advanced cognitive abilities: some make tools and use them to acquire food and for social displays; some can perform tasks requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can recognise kin and conspecifics; and they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax and concepts of number and numerical sequence. Research in primate cognition explores problem solving, memory, social interaction, a theory of mind, and numerical, spatial, and abstract concepts. Comparative studies show a trend towards higher intelligence going from prosimians to New World monkeys to Old World monkeys, and significantly higher average cognitive abilities in the great apes. However, there is a great deal of variation in each group (e.g., among New World monkeys, both spider and capuchin monkeys have scored highly by some measures), as well as in the results of different studies.