Many experiments have been carried out to test the behaviour and intelligence of animals. This image shows psychologist Elizabeth Brannon using touch-screens, Plexiglas boxes holding raisins and buckets hiding grapes to establish that ringtails and his mongoose lemur cousins possess a surprising ability to learn sequences of pictures and to discriminate quantities. While Brannon’s work is still only at a preliminary stage, its initial results lead her to believe that such studies could mark the dawning of a new appreciation of lemur intelligence. 'The ringtails live in social groups, which could be distracting, and they’re completely free to just ignore us and the apparatus. But despite these possible complications, we found they would completely voluntarily come over to the screen and participate.' (Brannon, 2004)
Brannon (2004) explained that sometimes, the lemurs even competed with one another. "Occasionally, one animal would come over and finish the sequence started by another to get the reward," (www.innovations-report.de)
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