Psychology Video Summary, Movie Review Example

In the lengthy—but very interesting and informative–video Ape Genius, experts and assistants attempt to find out what makes humans and their closest living relatives different in some ways and also similar in others.

Near the beginning of the video, the listener is told that in a remote part of Africa, apes are supposedly afraid of water; but a young chimp, clinging on to a flexible tree branch for security goes into a generous size pond and enjoys himself. Other apes saw that, and soon they copied that behaviour. Apes also copy the behaviour of humans when they live near them. While copying is a complicated task, it is, however, simpler than inventing it. One of the experts says that imitation is an essential skill for a culture, which is human. The video illustrated how much apes are like us. They have an amazing ability with numbers and have an extensive vocabulary of 3,000 English words. They also recognize a goodly number of symbols to which they like to point to express themselves. Goodall, one of the experts, discovered that chimpanzees are hunters, not unlike humans early hunting stage. They will even cooperate to accomplish a task they cannot do alone. A big negative for the apes, however, is that they have emotional issues. They are emotionally reactive, greedy, jealous, and get angry easily. Nevertheless, the question kept arising why they had not progressed further. There are several possible answers, but, perhaps, the most important is that they have no opposable thumbs.