As an associate professor of psychology, Sally Boysen has spent her career peering into the minds of our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. Her findings show that chimpanzees can be taught some human-like cognitive skills that never show in the wild. Boysen has taught chimps to count and to subtract and she documented their ability to think abstractly. Her work, sometimes is contentious, often sheds light on the way our own intelligence might have evolved.
Boysen can't say for certain if her plan to talk to the animals will work. …
