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According to Science, Chimps Can Cook

Chimps can cook. According to a study from Harvard University, humans' cognitive capacity for cooking is also shared by chimpanzees. This means that chimps and humans both prefer cooked food over raw food (who likes salad?), understand how cooking food works, and can cook for themselves.
Lily Lou
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Chimps can cook. According to a study from Harvard University, humans' cognitive capacity for cooking is also shared by chimpanzees. This means that chimps and humans both prefer cooked food over raw food (who likes salad?), understand how cooking food works, and can cook for themselves.

In the experiment, chimps were given two slices of sweet potato: one raw and one cooked. The scientists put a raw slice into a ~*magic bowl*~, which cooked the sweet potato and the other sweet potato slice in an unmagical bowl, which left the sweet potato raw. In the experiment, most of the chimps picked the sweet potato in the cooking device, suggesting that chimps understood the process of cooking sweet potatoes.

Photo courtesy of The New York Times
In another experiment, the chimps were given a raw slice of sweet potato and the ~*magic bowl*~ (the secret is that it is just two plastic bowls with pre-cooked sweet potato slice hidden in the bottom). Half of the chimps used the bowl and cooked their sweet potato slices. Photo courtesy of The New York Times
Chimps also showed the ability to transport food to be cooked. In the experiment, many chimps walked to the other side of their case with their sweet potato slice to cook it; however, some chimps carried the food in their mouths and accidently ate it (story of my life). As for self control, the scientists basically give the chimps a similar version of the marshmallow test - the scientists gave chimps sweet potatoes but appeared with the ~*magic bowl*~ after three minutes to see how many sweet potato slices the chimps saves. Several chimps passed this test, and two saved every sweet potato slice to be cooked later (Google search: do chimps have more self control than me?).
Scientists currently believe that
cooking played a large role in human evolution
and that ancestors of humans began to cook with fire around 2 million years ago.
This study has changed the way many scientists have previously seen human evolution, since chips were previously thought of as unable to cook because of experiments using fire.
So, if you can't cook, you better start now (maybe with
microwave mug recipes
?). Otherwise, the chimps might beat you to it.

Or at least chimps could cook like you if they had a microwave.

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