Gibbon is capable of imitating movies

The gibbons make their own tools after watching the video tutorial, even if they are not allowed to watch the entire movie.

Elizabeth Price, a scientist from St Andrews University (Scotland), and colleagues tested the learning ability of primates with an adult herd of gibbons. They divided them into 5 groups and showed them a video of a gibbon holding a stick in the tube to get the bunch of grapes outside its cage. Only one group can watch the entire video, while the other 4 groups are only partially viewed.

" With video we can control the amount of information that gibbons see, so we can understand exactly how much information they need to make the tool themselves ," Price said.

(Photo: PhysOrg)

After watching videos, the research team placed bunches of grapes outside the cage and put many sticks and plastic pipes near the gibbons. The results showed that those watching the entire video performed faster and more accurate assembly than the others.

" Creating new tools from what is available is a very rare behavior in the animal world. They have been very important behavior for human development ," Price said.

The gibbons are not allowed to watch the entire video still self-assembling to assemble rods with plastic pipes. When Price brought the bunch of grapes closer to the barn, the animals plugged the rod deeper into the tube to reduce the length of the tool. But when the bunch of grapes is pulled farther, they pull the stick out again to increase the length of the tool.

" The gibbons do not mimic the manipulation of the video stereotyped. In the case of the bunch of grapes too close, they pull the stick out of the tube completely and use only one of the two to get the reward. That behavior shows them. There is a flexible way of thinking to adapt to the situation , 'Price said.

However, what makes Price wonder if people rarely see gibbons making tools in the wild. Experiment also shows gibbon's ability to learn from each other. Price's team will continue to experiment with un-adult gibbons to understand their mutual learning abilities.

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