Top 5 animals with better memories than humans
4.3 (86.67%) 3 votesMan considers himself the crown of evolution, because it was he who invented airplanes, computers and the Internet. However, in comparison with some species of animals, we cannot stand any competition in terms of remembering numbers, objects, and the effectiveness of long-term and short-term memory. We will introduce you to animals whose memory is much better than that of humans.
Repeatedly “glorified” in science fiction films, chimpanzees actually demonstrate the wonders of short-term memory. A comparative experiment was conducted at Kyoto University (Japan).
A group of chimpanzees were taught to count to ten and held a competition with a group of people on the accuracy of remembering numbers flashing on a computer screen in different sequences. The test consisted of reproducing the location of numbers in the correct ascending order. Chimpanzees performed much better than humans.
The most interesting fact is that the duration of displaying numbers on the screen did not affect the quality of their memorization and reproduction. Scientists have unanimously concluded that chimpanzees have an amazing photographic memory.
While trainers taught sea lions cheap tricks, they noticed the remarkable long-term memory abilities of these clumsy sloths. Scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz taught a sea lion named Rio to remember and identify similar objects. She was shown cards with symbols, among which she identified the same ones.
However, the most surprising thing happened ten years later, when scientists decided to repeat this experiment with Rio again. She was shown not only symbols, but also numbers and letters, which she successfully identified and found a pair for. Even after all these years, considering that sea lions live no more than 25 years, Rio showed truly phenomenal long-term memory.
3. Elephant
Elephants always know where each member of their family is, regardless of direction or distance. An elephant is able to remember and track the locations and movements of up to 30 members of its herd.
This ability is realized with the help of a mental map, which the elephant draws up and keeps in memory, updating it with the help of a sensitive sense of smell. Thus, elephants use the “elephant” lobe of their brain in constant activity, which indicates the high performance of working memory of these amazing animals.
What is so special about the memory work of octopuses? Unlike other invertebrates, octopuses have well-developed short-term and long-term memory, which works through one and a half billion neurons.
Moreover, its active memory is absolutely autonomous and does not depend on passive long-term memory. If people could also selectively use their memories, their genius would have no equal.
1. American nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)
This little bird can remember the location of 33,000 pine nuts. The most amazing thing is that they hide small nuts in fallen leaves and easily find them under the snow in winter. This bird has amazing spatial memory, which helps it remember individual objects and reproduce their location.
Moreover, the hippocampus of the walnut (the part of the brain responsible for the transition of short-term memory to long-term memory) continues to produce neurons into adulthood. This means that while human memory deteriorates with age, hers only gets better.
The amazing animal world continues to amaze us with its wonders. How many more secret abilities do our little brothers keep that are yet to be revealed?
Human memory remains the subject of much research. To increase its information capacity, special exercises and programs have been developed. However, there are people who can already remember large amounts of a wide variety of information. They do not need diaries and devices with a recording function: the data is securely stored in their heads for many years. We are talking about eight owners of exceptional memory that anyone can envy.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Already at the age of three, the Austrian composer memorized and reproduced excerpts of plays performed by his father and sister on the harpsichord. At the age of 14, in the Sistine Chapel, the boy heard a complex choral work, the notes of which were kept in strict confidence. Arriving home, he wrote down the entire score from memory.
Comparison with the original showed that Mozart restored the composition with perfect accuracy. This was one of the first documented cases of a counterfeit copy of a piece of music being made. There is a hypothesis that the works of the great composer stimulate thought processes and improve memory. This phenomenon is called the “Mozart effect”.
Nikola Tesla
The Serbian inventor had a unique photographic memory. It was enough for him to look at the page once to forever imprint its contents in his mind. Nikola Tesla memorized entire books and reproduced complex three-dimensional images in detail. The engineer did not need reference books: he could reconstruct from memory any formula, equation or value from a table of logarithms.
The talented physicist also kept his drawings in his head. There he visualized new devices, tested them in operation, carried out modeling and modernization. In addition, Tesla spoke eight languages fluently. To increase his memory capacity, he trained. It all started after the death of his brother, when little Nikola began to have nightmares. To distract himself, the boy began to take mental trips - transporting himself to new cities and countries with the power of his imagination.
Sergei Rachmaninov
George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress
The outstanding Russian composer could boast of a unique photographic memory. For a long time, parents did not attach importance to their son’s abilities. He reluctantly sat down at the instrument, quickly and without looking at the notes, played the given material, and then ran away to his friends. Later, Sergei entered the Moscow Conservatory, where legends began to circulate about his phenomenal memory.
Rachmaninov memorized everything he heard with great speed. One day, composer Alexander Glazunov came to his teacher’s house and presented the first movement of his new symphony, which he had never shown to anyone before. It is easy to imagine the author’s surprise when the young student came out of the next room, sat down at the piano and repeated his composition by ear, jokingly passing it off as his own.
Alexander Alekhine
George Grantham Bain collection/Library of Congress
Russian chess player Alexander Alekhine remembered all the games he played, and in 1934 he became the record holder for playing blindfolded. Without looking at the board, he competed with 32 chess players at once and was defeated in only four games. At the same time, Alekhine memorized the moves and positions of the pieces on the board, calling on his visual memory to help only at particularly critical moments.
He knew six languages, had an amazing memory for faces, and after one reading he could recite more than a dozen pages by heart. These features led to funny situations in life. When meeting a new person, Alekhine could frighten his interlocutor. For example, remembering how four months ago he bought medicine for his six-year-old daughter Anna according to a prescription from doctor Zasedatelev, or pointing out that his interlocutor then took out a gray crocodile leather wallet from his left pocket.
Solomon Shereshevsky
In the summer of 1962, a young journalist came to psychologist Alexander Luria with a request to test his memory. The editor of the newspaper where he worked advised him to do this. The fact is that Solomon never wrote down and at the same time remembered with absolute accuracy all telephone numbers, names, surnames, addresses and lists of orders. The results of the examination surprised the psychologist so much that he devoted more than 30 years to studying the Shereshevsky phenomenon.
The man memorized thousands of incoherent words, long formulas and phrases of an unfamiliar language at a time. But forgetting was very difficult for him. Shereshevsky even developed his own techniques for getting rid of unnecessary data. He perceived everything he heard synesthetically: he felt the smell, taste and color of the words. They say that for this reason Shereshevsky could not read while eating - the taste of food was interrupted. He later left journalism and became a famous mnemonist.
Kim Peek
Kathleen Turley/Globallookpress
American Kim Peek remembered up to 98% of the information. A congenital abnormality of the brain led to a manifold increase in his memory capacity. The man could read two pages at once - with his right and left eyes. It took him 8-10 seconds to turn a book spread. By the age of seven, the child prodigy knew the Bible by heart, and by the time he reached adulthood, he memorized the complete works of Shakespeare.
At the same time, the man needed help in everyday life, since he could not cope with simple everyday tasks on his own. In adulthood, Kim Pik mastered the piano - he played most of the works from memory. By the time of his death, the only one had the contents of about 12 thousand books in his head. His abilities inspired writer Barry Morrow to create the film Rain Man.
Marilu Henner
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The American actress gained fame not only for her roles. Doctors and physiologists are studying her autobiographical memory. Marylou's first memories date back to when she was 18 months old. She clearly remembers playing with her brother. From that moment on, the 66-year-old woman can describe any day in great detail: what she was wearing, where she went, what programs were on TV.
This phenomenon was called hyperthymesia. To remember the events of her life, Marylou does not need to make an effort. Its memory works as a video recording device, allowing you to rewind and play back any fragment. Thanks to this phenomenon, Henner remembers thousands of human faces. According to the actress, she perceives her peculiarity as a gift and has never experienced any inconvenience.
Jill Price
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But another owner of the same abilities admits that hyperthymesia exhausts her. Jill Price was the first to be diagnosed with the amazing syndrome. In 2000, she wrote a letter to a doctor at the University of California, Irvine. The woman said that she remembers in detail every day since 1976. Any date she hears transports her back to that time, forcing her to relive the past again and again.
According to Jill, this happens endlessly and uncontrollably. In addition, all the bad memories in her head remain as bright and clear as many years ago. In 2008, Price wrote an autobiographical book, The Woman Can't Forget. Thanks to increased interest in research in this area, hyperthymesia has been confirmed in several more people.
There are only a few dozen people on the entire planet who have phenomenal memories and can remember even the smallest details from their infancy, while most people have absolutely no memory of themselves at such an early age. The incredibly large amount of memory is due to a syndrome that is associated with the concept of hyperthymesia.
Hyperthymesia, or hyperthymestic syndrome, is the ability of a person to remember and reproduce an extremely high amount of information about his life. This ability affects only autobiographical memory. In medicine, they still cannot determine the status of this phenomenon and sometimes associate it with hypermnesia, that is, a similar ability that affects all types and forms of memory.
The term “hyperthymesia” appeared not so long ago, in 2006. A group of scientists then put forward a hypothesis about the characteristics of this disorder. Thus, a person who develops hyperthymestic syndrome spends an abnormal amount of time thinking about his past, resulting in the ability to recall certain events from his life.
While phenomenal memory developed with the help of mnemonic techniques is not considered a pathology, if we are talking about remembering the necessary information and data, then scientists consider hyperthymesia to be a deviation. Patients with this syndrome have uncontrolled and unconscious associations when seeing certain objects or dates, as a result of which the person remembers with accuracy any day of his life.
One famous person who develops hyperthymesia is Marilu Henner (born 1952), an American actress and producer.
As for Marilu Henner, whose phenomenon is now being actively studied by specialists, her earliest memories date back to the age of 18 months. On this day, as the woman recalls, she was playing with her brother. Interestingly, it was previously believed that a person cannot remember what happened to him before he was two years old.
After this event, she can talk about how she spent any of her days, what she talked about, what programs were on TV, etc. So, if an ordinary person remembers about 250 faces throughout his life, then Henner remembers thousands of them. From this, scientists also concluded that long-term memory is not selective, and all events that are processed by short-term memory go into long-term storage.
The process of remembering for Marilu Henner requires absolutely no effort. This, as experts say, is akin to an ideal video editor that can accurately recreate any fragment of a recording.
American Jill Price - she remembers absolutely all the events of her life, starting from the age of 14 - if you name an arbitrary date, Jill will reproduce what happened to her that day, what the weather was like, what important events happened in the world. Her phenomenal abilities were confirmed by scientists at the University of California, Irvine in 2006. Since then, thanks to increased interest in research in this area, hyperthymesia has been confirmed in five more people.
In total, according to scientists, by 2014 it was possible to identify about 50 people with such incredible abilities to remember in detail any day of their lives. Scientists are currently unable to accurately identify the causes of this syndrome, but this may be due to the fact that in patients the temporal lobes and caudate nucleus in the brain are enlarged in size.
Neuroscientists study the characteristics of the brain. As part of the search for people with good memory, more than two thousand people were studied at the California Neuroscience Center. They were asked sixty questions, which only people who remembered everything could answer.
It is believed that the planet is home to between four and twenty people with supermemories. The most famous of them is Los Angeles resident Jill Price, who wrote a book about herself, “The Woman Cannot Forget.” The American city turned out to be rich in unusual talents: the second owner of absolute memory, Bob Petrell, also lives in Los Angeles.
Two more people with officially recognized supermemory also live in the United States: Brad Williams and actress Marilu Henner. The latter is notable for the fact that she remembers herself from the age of 18 months - this contradicts the opinion of scientists that a person is not able to reproduce the events of his life that happened to him before the age of two.
Due to the fact that there are very few people with hyperthymesia, there is practically no data on the occurrence of this ability. Some scientists consider absolute memory a myth and the desire of people to believe in their limitless capabilities. Professor of the history of psychology at the University of Groningen, Douwe Draaisma, writes in his “Book of Forgetting” that “most of our experiences leave no trace in the brain.”
Douet also notes that “people tend to compare memory to something that has become a symbol of preservation for them personally, such as a computer or a photograph. And for forgetting, other metaphors are used: a sieve, a colander. But they all assume that storing in memory and forgetting are opposite processes, and, accordingly, one excludes the other. In fact, forgetting is mixed into our memories like yeast into dough.
The professor applies a medieval metaphor to memory - a palimpsest, i.e. a reused piece of parchment. “Parchment was expensive, and therefore the old texts were scraped off or washed off and a new text was written on top, after a while the old text began to appear through the new text. ...a palimpsest is a very good image of the layering of memories: new information comes, old information is erased, but in principle, the old information is hidden in the new. Your memories also resonate in your experiences, and for this reason you cannot describe a memory as a direct copy of what you experienced. They are absorbed by what is already there.” (Based on materials from “Het geheugen is ongezeglijk.” - de Volkskrant, 03.11.10, p. 48-49.)
Most of us, however, are not “lucky” to have absolute memory. And, while scientists are arguing whether hyperthymesia is a disease or a semantic feature of the body, we have the power to make our memory good, because no one disputes the possibility of training it.
I am a typical owner of a “girlish” memory, and therefore, sooner or later, I would still write something on this topic. And, as usual, I want to write about a lot of things, so... we are starting a series of articles dedicated to memory! Today we’ll talk about people with phenomenal memories.
This article began with the film "Rain Man". You probably watched it at some point too. The main character had a super memory and slightly strange habits. Agree that if it was just an autistic person who memorized everything, the film would have turned out more Hollywood... So why did the director need the autistic person to also have problems with coordination?
It turns out that this is all thanks to the prototype, a real person named Kim Pik. He did not suffer from autism, but he had Savant syndrome and his cerebellum was damaged. And Kim actually remembered about 98% of all the information he read. By the way, he also read unusually - with his right eye one page, with his left - another. The entire turn took him 8-10 seconds. By the way, Kim also never went to the casino, considering it unethical.
But another “human computer”, Dominic O’Brien, visited the casino. And thanks to his developed memory, he won so often and so much that casinos around the world banned him in writing from appearing with them. By the way, Dominic is a multiple world champion in memory, although he was a poor student at school.
Who else can surprise you with their abilities?
American Jill Price remembers absolutely her entire life from the age of 14 - all the events, impressions... You can give her any date, and she will tell you everything about that day - from the weather to the political situation. This ability got its name - hyperthymesia. And after the start of the study in 2006, they found five more people with the same absolute memory.
The commander Themistocles and the well-known Socrates knew every inhabitant of Athens. But there were about 20 thousand of them! Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and King Cyrus had similar abilities - they remembered the name of each of the 30,000 soldiers.
Seneca could remember 2,000 unrelated words and repeat them in the same order. He is slightly inferior to Samvel Gharibyan, who is able to repeat 1,000 words spoken to him, even if he does not understand their meaning.
Italian Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti became famous for his ability to quickly learn languages. One day he was asked to confess to two foreigners sentenced to death. Mezzofanti did not know their language, but having learned what language the foreigners spoke, he learned the language overnight - and in the morning he was able to confess to the criminals. To remember a word, he only needed to read it once.
The archaeologist Schliemann did not have any special natural abilities, but through training he developed his memorization abilities so much that he could learn a new language in 6-8 weeks.
The Japanese Hideaki Tomoyeri was able to correctly reproduce the number “pi” with an accuracy of 40,000 decimal places.
Help desk operator Paula Prentice remembers 128,603 phone numbers, as well as the names and addresses of their owners. At the same time... she does not remember her own number and keeps it written down on a piece of paper.
Jews from the Polish religious community "Chasse Pollak" could absolutely accurately name the position of every word on any page of all 12 volumes of the Talmud.
These are not all amazing people, but even they are enough to show that our brain can remember a lot, you just need to train it. In the meantime, we can only dream about how we would use absolute memory if we had it - would we go to a casino, help people, being a human encyclopedia, sign up for the World Memory Championship, or something else...?
