What Does “A Shrewdness of Apes” Mean?
“Shrewdness” is a fitting, if slightly formal-sounding, nod to one of the defining traits of great apes: genuine, well-documented cognitive sophistication. Apes, a group that includes chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans, have demonstrated tool use, complex problem-solving, self-recognition in mirror tests, and forms of social learning passed down within specific populations, evidence pointing to intelligence that researchers take seriously as comparable in various ways to that of young human children.
This cognitive depth shows up across everyday ape behavior: chimpanzees fashioning and using tools to extract termites or crack nuts, orangutans solving multi-step puzzles to access food, and various species showing evidence of planning ahead, saving a tool for later use rather than using it immediately. “Shrewdness” captures this real intellectual capacity well, a word that credits apes with the kind of calculated, thoughtful behavior decades of research has increasingly confirmed they’re genuinely capable of.
Example: “The research team spent the morning documenting the shrewdness of apes solving the same puzzle box in three entirely different ways.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals