Chimps learn to play rock-paper-scissors
ShoulD you ever have a quarrel with a chimpanzee, there is now a simple way to settle your differences.
For after being taught to make tools and even to communicate with humans, our primate cousins have learnt a new trick – how to play rock-paper-scissors.
But although they understand the playground game – often used to decide who should get their way – to about the same level as a four-year-old human it takes chimps a while to grasp some of its finer points.
What particularly baffles them, scientists found, is that scissors, which always lose to rock, are better than paper, which always beats rock.
While pre-school children take on average five sessions to master the game – so they win more often than they would by mere chance – the chimps took 307.
The most successful, Ayumu, learned the game after just 161 sessions at the primate Research institute of Kyoto university in Japan.
The study, published in the journal primates, suggests the main differences between chimps and children when trying to understand circular patterns is that children learn more rapidly and are better at correcting their mistakes.
it is the first time that the game has been used to compare humans and chimps, who share 98 per cent of our DnA. The primates were taught rockpaper- scissors on a computer touch- screen, with pieces of apple as a reward or a buzzer sounding if they got it wrong.
Children were rewarded with a wildlife picture.
Two of the seven chimps struggled in the study, published in the journal primates.
Explaining why the game matters, the authors state: ‘This type of mental process might be needed in complex relationship network-building, knowledge updating and problem-solving.’
Chimps, which were asked to play looking at chimpanzee hands and human hands, did not appear to realise that our hands were similar to their own.
But the findings suggest that should you ever need to settle a dispute with a chimp, the strategy is obvious – select paper and you will probably win.