Is your child smarter than an ape?

Research from Australian scientists shows that it takes quite a few years for children to be able to outsmart our hairier cousins.

Foresight - the ability to imagine and prepare for future possibilities - is considered one of the hallmarks of intelligence, and distinguishes humans from animals.

Research, published in peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters this month, by a team of University of Queensland researchers led by Professor Thomas Suddendorf suggests we aren't born with this ability but it develops as our brains do.

To test foresight, Professor Suddendorf and his team compared the responses of chimpanzees and some young children via a simple experiment.

The team set up two vertical tubes. A research assistant stood over them and held out an object - a ball for the children, a tasty grape for the chimps - before quickly dropping it through one of the tubes.

The child or the chimp then had to grab the prize before it hit the floor. 

"We were trying to come up with a way for young children or other animals to demonstrate that they understood the future was uncertain, and prepare for one or multiple events," Professor Suddendorf explained.

The best strategy to catch the object is to cover both holes with one's hands.

But the apes and the two and three-year-old humans tended to cover only a single hole.

By four years of age, the children's minds had developed enough to allow them to forecast multiple outcomes.

In the experiment they covered both holes with their hands and caught the toy every time.

"The two-year olds seemed to not really be preparing for both outcomes.

"We found as children aged they would use two hands, and by age 4 they would all cover both exits on the first try," Professor Suddendorf said.

Animal brains are good at predicting immediate outcomes, Professor Suddendorf said. But they lack the ability to deal with what he terms "environmental uncertainty".

Humans exclusively are able to "mentally represent multiple, even mutually exclusive versions of the future, and prepare accordingly".

Animals can show limited signs of foresight. Squirrels hoard nuts for the winter, for example. But studies have shown this behaviour is instinctual, rather than evidence of actual cognition.

Even squirrels that have never been through winter hoard nuts, driven by some imperative hidden in their genetic code.

In the University of Queensland team's experiment one of the apes, Samantha, eventually worked out the trick and began covering both holes.

But, said Professor Suddendorf, whenever experimenters gave her a break and then restarted the experiment, she would go back to using one hand.

Some of the four-year-old humans, by contrast, used two hands as soon as the experiment started.

Professor Suddendorf calls this a classic example of the difference between conditioning - Samantha was able to learn through trial and error - and foresight.