Researchers have managed to teach monkeys the rules of the rock-paper-scissors game, and they’re doing pretty well.
Playing shifumi with a chimpanzee is possible. The animal would be as formidable at the game of rock-paper-scissors as a four-year-old, which is not bad for a primate. Japanese researchers managed to teach monkeys the famous hand game, the universal rule of which is known to all: the leaf covers the stone, which crushes the scissors, which cut the leaf.
“The aim of this work was to determine whether chimpanzees could learn characteristic traits by being trained in the rules of rock-paper-scissors”, write the authors of this work published in the journal Primates.
With a few differences
However, according to their observations, this cognitive performance is very much in their strings. The learning time of the game is certainly longer than in adult humans, but primates easily compete with that of a child.
The researchers trained the monkeys using hands drawn on a screen, and had them work out each of the rules of the game – paper-stone, then rock-scissors, and finally paper-scissors. The chimpanzees had to choose between two options.
The game was also played by 38 children aged three to six in order to compare the results. The researchers observed that “children change their choice immediately after making a bad one, whereas chimpanzees tend to repeat the same mistake several times before correcting it”.
In addition, the monkeys encountered some difficulty in grasping as the scissors cut the leaf. These differences aside, the researchers are categorical: chimpanzees know how to play shifumi.
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