Summary: A recent research reveals that long-tailed macaques are most drawn to videos featuring interpersonal conflict and well-known party members, just like humans. Scientists discovered that the chimps ‘ video of fighting, grooming, running, or sitting were the most interesting to watch.
They even preferred to observe strangers as members of their own cultural group, which suggests a shared biological desire to track group dynamics. These findings provide insight into the deep social instincts shared by primates, as well as how personality and position affect attention.
Important details
- The most significant attention was paid to video of anger by lemurs.
- Common Faces: They favored interacting with regarded group members over being a total stranger.
- Personality Impact: More closely watched, less violent, low-ranking monkeys than dominant ones.
Ohio State University is the cause
Have you ever wondered what kind of video content would catch monkeys ‘ interest the best?
According to a recent study of long-tailed lemurs, primates display similar interests to people when they post videos of people they know and who are at odds with.
According to Brad Bushman, co-author of the research and professor of conversation at The Ohio State University,” Humans and chimps are both social creatures who have a basic need to belong.”
It’s hardly surprising that both of them are interested in the movie information that might aid in their group’s communication.
The research was just recently published online in the Animal Thinking journal. Elisabeth H. M. Sterck, doctor of dog behavior and thinking at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, led it.
28 chimps that were housed at a animal research facility in The Netherlands were shown two-minute videos by researchers. Each monkey watched a number of videos over the years that featured monkeys in their group or complete strangers. In each individual movie, monkeys were depicted engaging in one of four different kinds of behavior: issue, grooming, running, or sitting.
The researchers calculated the monkeys ‘ reaction times while watching and how long they spent staring straight at the camera.
Results revealed that movies featuring conflicts between monkeys attracted the most attention from macaques. The next most watched type of video was starring. The least attention was drawn to grooming and sitting.
It is interesting that both people and chimps seem drawn to videos with related content, according to Bushman.
There is a lot of research that shows how popular harsh media are with people. According to Bushman, there is now some proof that other primates may find fight and hostility in videos attractive.
This makes sense from an adaptive standpoint. Because anger is an adaptive response that increases survival, he added, it may be wired into both humans and other animals to pay attention to it.
The study’s another important finding was that the macaques watched movies starring strangers with greater frequency than those featuring members of their own group.
This suggests that gathering social data about team members is more crucial than gathering stranger data, Sterck  said.
And it’s not just anything that’s appealing to monkeys to see familiar eyes on the screen.
We as viewers of movies prefer to view actors we know playing in great films, Bushman said.
Studies also revealed that less violent and low-ranking macaques were more interested in the videos than others.
More assertive persons can be more assured that their anger won’t have an impact on them because they don’t have to spend as much attention to others, according to Sterck.
” Lower-ranking people may turn out to be victims of anger, and that may be why they pay more attention to what other people are doing in the videos.”
Additionally, high-stressed lemurs who were more readily stressed paid less attention to party members than those who weren’t.
According to Sterck,” we found that the cultural information that was gathered from the movies varied depending on the dominance position and behavioral tendencies, which may be related to personality.”
Two distinct groups of lemurs reside at Rijswijk, Netherlands ‘ Biomedical Primate Research Center.
The” stranger” videos were those of a third out-of-view group, not the macaques themselves.
There is a hall in each enclosure where the macaques have a habit of taking mental tests. The monkeys had use four areas where they could watch videos on a computer. The topics entered the hall on their own will during the two-minute videos, and they were cut off from other multi-generational monkeys.
” The lemurs are very visual creatures. They are really interested in watching videos because their eye is similar to that of people, according to Sterck.
The researchers claimed the research demonstrated that people and our monkey relatives have similar tendencies, including the interest to conflict-related videos.
Bushman claimed that even this simple exposure to extreme media caught the attention of lemurs in the study.
It is obvious why people are so drawn to aggressive media when we see this in some of our closest animal friends.
Sophie Kamp, Ive Rouart, Lisette van cave Berg, Dian Zijlmans, and Tom Roth were the study’s another co-authors, all of whom graduated from Utrecht University.
About this information about studies in dog psychology
Author: Jeff Grabmeier
Source: Ohio State University
Contact: Jeff Grabmeier – Ohio State University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Start access to original research.
Elisabeth H. M. Sterck et cetera.,” Responses to social films in long-tailed lemurs.” Pet Thinking
Abstract
Long-tailed lemurs ‘ reactions to social media video
Pets can learn valuable social details from watching social interactions between conspecifics.
The social information, such as acquaintance with the conspecifics and the type of discussion, the recipient’s focus, and perhaps also the reaction to movement and stress, may vary.
Additionally, individual faculties may affect how these behavioral responses are expressed.
We examined the reactions of captive long-tailed macaques living in multi-generational groups by displaying video fragments with different social content ( i .e., run, conflict, sit, groom, and social content of group members and strangers ).
In contrast, we examined how responses to these movies were related to an individual’s social and self-directed behavior in its social class.
Subjects were more interested in watching videos of group members than strangers, especially those who were more subordinate and less stressed out ( i .e., low stress response when observing natural aggression )
Younger people who saw strangers but did not see team members, and those who had higher levels of baseline self-directed behavior and much grooming, had higher levels of self-directed behavior.
Regarding perspective, monkeys were more interested in videos with active and intense content than those that were filmed while sat and groomed.
Overall, multi-generational group monkeys exhibit a great interest in gathering societal information from group members, which is influenced by their interpersonal role and personal capacity to handle social situations.
