Family faces and fights: What the monkeys like to see

Summary: A new study reveals that long -tailed macaques, such as humans, are more captivated by videos with social conflicts and family members of the group. The researchers showed the videos of the monkeys of the macaques dedicated to fighting, preparing, running or sitting, and discovered that the greatest amount of time spent seeing aggressive encounters.

They also preferred to see the members of their own social group about strangers, which suggests a shared evolutionary impulse to monitor group dynamics. These findings shed light on the deep social instincts that primates share and how personality and state influence attention.

Key facts:

Conflict approach: The macaque paid more attention to aggression videos. Family faces: They preferred to see the members of the known group about strangers. Personality impact: low -ranking monkeys and less aggressive observed more closely than dominant people.

Source: Ohio State University

Have you ever wondered what kind of video content would you capture the attention of the monkeys?

A new long -tailed macaque study suggests that monkeys seem to like part of the same type of content as humans: videos with aggression and individuals they know.

“Humans and macaques are social animals that have a fundamental need to belong,” said Brad Bushman, co -author of the study and communication professor at Ohio State University.

“It is not surprising that both are more interested in the video content that can help them navigate relationships in their groups.”

The study was published recently in the Animal Cognition magazine. It was directed by Elisabeth HM Sterck, Professor of Behavior and Cognition of Animals at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

The researchers showed videos of two minutes to 28 macaques living in a primate research center in the Netherlands. Each macaco saw multiple videos with time with monkeys in their group or strangers. Each individual video showed monkeys in one of the four types of activities: conflict, preparation of the other, running or sitting.

The researchers calculated how long the monkeys spent directly looking at the screen and their reactions while watching.

The results showed that the Macacos paid the most attention to the videos with conflicts between monkeys. Running was the next most popular video type. The preparation and session attracted the least attention.

It is remarkable that both macaques and humans seem to be attracted to videos with similar content, Bushman said.

“We have many investigations that show the popularity of violent media with humans. Now we have some evidence that other primates could also be attracted to conflict and aggression in videos,” Bushman said.

“From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Both humans and other animals can be connected to pay attention to aggression because that is an adaptive response that increases survival,” he added.

The other significant finding of the study was that the Macacas saw videos with members of their own group more closely than those involving strangers.

“This indicates that collecting social information about group members is more important than obtaining information about strangers,” said Sterck.

And seeing family faces on the screen is not just something attractive to monkeys.

“When we, as humans, we see movies, we like to see the actors we know, we like to watch the stars playing in great films that the actors that are not familiar to us,” Bushman said.

The results also showed that low -ranking and less aggressive macaques paid more attention than others to videos.

“The most dominant people may be more secure that aggression will not affect them, they don’t have to pay attention to others,” said Sterck.

“People with the lowest rank can become a victim of aggression and that may be the reason why they pay more attention to what others are doing in the videos.”

In addition, high -performance macaques who stressed more easily paid less attention to group members than those who did not acted as stressed.

“We discovered that the collection of social information from videos differed with the range of domain and behavioral trends, which can reflect personality,” said Sterck.

The investigation involved two separate groups of macaques living in the Biomedical Primates Research Center in Rijswijk, the Netherlands.

The “strange” videos that the macaque saw were those monkeys of a third out of vision.

In each enclosure, there is a corridor where macaques are accustomed to participating in cognitive tests. There were four compartments where monkeys could watch videos on a laptop. The subjects entered the corridor by their own volition, and were isolated from other monkeys of their multigenerational group during the two -minute videos.

“Macacos are very visual animals. Their view is similar to that of humans and are very interested in watching videos,” Sterck said.

The researchers said the findings showed that humans share trends with our monkey relatives, including the attraction of videos with conflicts.

“Even this brief exposure to aggressive media captured the attention of the macaques in the study,” Bushman said.

“When you see this in some of our closest primates relatives, it is easy to see why humans are so interested in violent media.”

Other co -authors of the study, all from the University of Utrecht, were Sophie Kamp, Ive Rourt, Lisette Van Den Berg, Dian Zijlmans and Tom Roth.

About this animal psychology research news

Author: Jeff Grabmeier
Source: Ohio State University
Contact: Jeff Grabmeier – Ohio State University
Image: The image is accredited to Neuroscience News

Original research: open access.
“Reactions to social videos in long -tailed macaques” by Elisabeth HM Sterck et al. Cognition of animals

Abstract

Reactions to social videos in long -tailed macaques

Animals can obtain important social information by observing social interactions among the specific cones.

Depending on the social content, such as familiarity with the specific cones and the type of interaction, the attention of the receiver and possibly also the response to movement and stress, it could differ.

In addition, these behavioral responses may vary according to the characteristics of the individual.

By showing video fragments with different social contents (that is, executing, conflict, sit, boyfriend) of group members and strangers, we measure the reaction of captive long -tailed macacks living in multigenerational groups.

In addition, we explore how the social and self -directed behavior of an individual in his social group was related to the reactions to these videos.

The subjects paid more attention to the videos of the group members than strangers, especially more subordinate and less sensitive to stress (that is, a response of low stress by observing natural aggression) to individuals.

The self -directed behavior was greater for younger people who saw strangers, but not to the group members, and for people with high levels of self -directed behavior and little preparation.

With respect to the context, the monkeys paid more attention to the videos with active and aggressive content compared to the seated and cleaning videos.

In total, monkeys living in multigenerational groups show great interest in collecting social information about group members, and this is modulated by their social role and personal ability to manage social situations.