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Baboons show their word skills

Reading may stem from a visual aptitude shared by all primates

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Baboons hang out in the bush, not in bookstores. Yet these avid nonreaders can learn to tell written, real words from nonsense words, a new study finds.

LETTERS OF INTENT In a new study, baboons pressed symbols on touch-screen computers to indicate whether four-letter strings, such as vast and virt, were words or not.