Chimp Test
Numbers flash, then vanish behind blank squares. Click them in order from memory. Young chimpanzees are genuinely better at this than you are.
Free in your browser — no download, no sign up. Scores stay on your device.
How it works
- Numbered squares from 1 to N appear scattered across the grid. Look while you can — you get one glance.
- Click 1. The instant you do, every remaining number hides behind a blank square. Now you are working from memory.
- Tap the blanks in ascending order — 2, 3, 4, and up. Get the whole sequence right and the level clears.
- Each level you complete adds one more number. You start at four and climb from there.
- Three strikes end the test. A strike is one wrong square. Your score is the highest N you completed.
Where the chimp test comes from
The task is a limited-hold memory test from the primatology lab of Tetsuro Matsuzawa at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute. In a 2007 study, a young chimpanzee named Ayumu was shown numerals scattered on a touchscreen; the moment he touched the first, the rest were masked with white squares, and he had to press the remaining numbers in order from memory.
Ayumu could do this at exposures far too brief for the human subjects to keep up, staying accurate where the adults fell apart. The finding, published by Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa in Current Biology, is often described as young chimps having a form of eidetic-like working memory for spatial position — an interpretation that is debated. This page is a faithful reconstruction of that task, not a recreation of the original apparatus.
How honest we are being about your score
Your score is the highest count of numbers you cleared in one go. That is all it is: a number from a browser game you played once, on one afternoon, on whatever device you are holding.
We have not run a norming study, so there are no percentiles here and no 'you scored better than X% of humans' line — inventing that would be lying. What the research does support is the comparison in the other direction: on the very brief exposures used in the Kyoto experiments, young chimpanzees outperformed the adult humans tested. You are welcome to feel humbled by a chimp. That part is real.
If you want more browser tests that measure something specific rather than something grand, this site also has a reaction time test, a CPS test, a typing test, and the Attention Span Test at /attention-test/.
FAQ
What is the chimp test?
A working-memory test where numbered squares appear on a grid, then hide the instant you click the first one. You click the rest in ascending order from memory. It reconstructs a limited-hold memory task used with chimpanzees at Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute, where a young chimp outperformed the adult humans tested at brief exposures.
Are chimpanzees really better than humans at this?
At the fast version, the research says yes. In a 2007 study from Tetsuro Matsuzawa's lab, a young chimpanzee named Ayumu stayed accurate when the numbers were shown for only a fraction of a second, while the adult human subjects could not keep up. Some researchers describe it as a photographic-like working memory for spatial layout, though that reading is debated. Give a human more favorable conditions and the gap narrows — but the chimps did not need them.
How do you play the chimp test?
Numbers 1 to N appear scattered on the grid. Click 1, and the rest immediately hide behind blank squares. Then tap the blanks in order — 2, 3, 4, and so on. You start with four numbers, and each level you clear adds one more. Three wrong squares end the test.
What is a good score on the chimp test?
The numbers outrun most people's memory before long, but where that happens varies a lot from person to person. There is no official cutoff here, because we have not normed this against a population and will not pretend a number we made up is science. Clearing into the teens is genuinely hard. Ayumu the chimpanzee was working with nine numerals at speeds humans cannot match, which is the whole point of the story.
How does the scoring work?
Your score is the highest count of numbers you completed in a single level. Finish the level with five numbers and you score at least five; the run continues, adding one number per level, until you accumulate three strikes. A strike is one square clicked out of order.
Is this the same as the Human Benchmark chimp test?
It is the same underlying idea — the numbered-squares memory task inspired by the Ayumu experiments — which several sites, including Human Benchmark, have adapted. This is our own build of it. We describe the mechanics and the origin honestly and keep your results in your own browser rather than on a leaderboard.
Is the chimp test free?
Yes. Free in your browser, no download, no sign up, no account. Your scores stay in your browser's local storage. It is a burger site.
The Reflex Lab
The Reflex Lab — nine instruments that measure you. Scores stay in your browser.
- Reaction Time Test — median of 5, in ms
- CPS Test — clicks per second
- Spacebar Counter — presses, counted
- Aim Trainer — 30 targets, timed
- Typing Test — words per minute
- Number Memory Test — digits before you break
- Visual Memory Test — tiles, from memory
- Sequence Memory Test — one step longer each time
- Chimp Test — you, versus Ayumu (this page)
For the longer version of being measured, take the two-minute attention span test — scored out of 100.