Researchers teach baboons to spot four-letter words

Baboons can't technically read, so no worries on the doomsday sci-fi scenarios, but a new study has determined that baboons can distinguish real English-language words from fake ones. Researchers say that they trained six Guinea baboons to pick out actual four-letter words from groups of nonsense letters. After six weeks, on average, the monkeys picked the words 75 percent of the time. A correct answer was rewarded with dry wheat. The star was a male named Dan, who could correctly identify 308 words out of a pool of 7,832 non-words.