Video: Wild marmosets learn skills from monkey movies

Screening an instructional monkey movie in a forest reveals that marmosets do not only learn from family members: they also copy on-screen strangers. It is the first time such a video has been used for investigations in the wild.

Tina Gunhold at the University of Vienna, Austria, and her colleagues filmed a common marmoset retrieving a treat from a plastic device. They then took the device to the Atlantic Forest near Aldeia in Pernambuco, Brazil, and showed the movie to wild marmosets there.

Although monkeys are known to learn from others in their social group, especially when they are young, little is known about their ability to learn from monkeys that do not belong to the same group. Marmosets are territorial, so the presence of an outsider – even a virtual one on a screen – could provoke an attack.


“We didn’t know if wild marmosets would be frightened of the video box but actually they were all attracted to it,” says Gunhold.

Compared to monkeys shown a static image of the stranger, video-watching marmosets were more likely to manipulate the device, typically copying the technique shown (see video).

Monkey business

Young monkeys spent more time near the video box than older family members, suggesting that they found the movie more engaging – although as soon as one monkey mastered the task, it was impossible to tell whether the others were learning from the video or from their relative. “We think it’s a combination of both,” says Gunhold.

“What a neat study and a really nice application of a usually lab-based technique for the field,” says Alecia Carter at the University of Cambridge. She says it might be perfect for answering questions about the different ways in which individual monkeys learn from their peers.

Gunhold thinks similar video set-ups could demonstrate whether monkeys are more likely to watch a dominant group-member rather than a subordinate – although Carter says this might be difficult in practice, because it would involve filming specific individuals from the wild marmoset groups rather than filming unrelated animals in the lab. “Most studies focus on how information is transmitted between monkeys, but few have looked at how traditions are formed,” she says.

The video approach could also be useful for studying other animals. Harry Marshall from the University of Exeter, UK, who studies animal social behaviour, thinks it is likely to allow a wider range of wild social groups to be studied. “I think it is definitely needed,” he says.

Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2014.0439