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The study was led by researchers at Utrecht University<\/a> in the Netherlands, in collaboration with The Ohio State University.<\/p>\n Inside the monkey theater<\/p>\n The team showed two-minute videos to 28 macaques<\/a> living at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. <\/p>\n Each video featured monkeys from the same group or complete strangers, engaged in one of four activities: fighting, grooming, running, or just sitting around.<\/p>\n The macaques were free to enter a testing corridor where laptops played the videos. These testing areas were already familiar to the animals, so the environment wasn\u2019t new or stressful. While watching, researchers tracked how long the monkeys looked at the screen.<\/p>\n The results were clear: the macaques paid the most attention to videos showing fights between monkeys. Running came in second. Grooming and sitting barely registered.<\/p>\n Conflict grabs attention<\/p>\n Brad Bushman is co-author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State University.<\/p>\n \u201cHumans<\/a> and macaques are both social animals who have a fundamental need to belong,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not surprising that they both would be most interested in the video content that may help them navigate relationships in their groups.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have plenty of research showing the popularity of violent media<\/a> with humans. Now we have some evidence that other primates might also be attracted to conflict and aggression in videos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFrom an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Both humans and other animals may be hardwired to pay attention to aggression because that is an adaptive response that increases survival,\u201d Bushman added.<\/p>\n Groupmates get more views<\/p>\n The macaques didn\u2019t just favor conflict<\/a> \u2013 they also preferred to watch monkeys they knew. Videos of their own group members got more attention than clips featuring strangers.<\/p>\n \u201cThis indicates that gathering social information on group members is more important than getting information about strangers,\u201d said Elisabeth H.M. Sterck, professor of animal behavior and cognition at Utrecht University.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we as humans watch movies, we like to see actors we know \u2013 we like to see the stars playing in big movies more than we do actors who are not familiar to us,\u201d Bushman said.<\/p>\n Monkey social status <\/p>\n Not all monkeys watched with equal interest. Lower-ranking and less aggressive macaques were more attentive to the videos than their dominant peers.<\/p>\n \u201cMore dominant individuals can be more confident that aggression<\/a> will not affect them \u2013 they don\u2019t have to pay attention to others as much,\u201d Sterck said.<\/p>\n \u201cLower-ranking individuals can become an aggression victim and that may be why they pay more attention to what others are doing in the videos.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, monkeys that were more anxious or easily stressed were less focused on group members.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that the gathering of social information from the videos differed with dominance rank and behavioral tendencies, which may reflect personality,\u201d Sterck said.<\/p>\n A shared curiosity across species<\/p>\n These monkeys, known for their visual acuity, watched the videos on their own terms \u2013 walking into the test space voluntarily. Each session was brief, but the pull of conflict on screen was undeniable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe macaques are very visual animals. Their eyesight is similar to that of humans, and they are very interested in watching videos,\u201d Sterck said.<\/p>\n And while the videos were short, their effect was real. Bushman noted that even this brief exposure to aggressive media captured the attention of macaques in the study.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see this in some of our closest primate relatives, it is easy to see why humans are so interested in violent media,\u201d said Bushman. <\/p>\n A primate preference for drama<\/p>\n What we see on screen says a lot about who we are \u2013 and apparently, that\u2019s true for monkeys too.<\/p>\n In this study, our primate cousins showed they\u2019re drawn to social drama and familiar faces, just like humans sitting down with popcorn for a movie night. <\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s about survival, curiosity, or just plain interest, the content that grabs attention may be more universal than we thought.<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Animal Cognition<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever wonder what kind of videos would keep monkeys glued to a screen? Turns out, their preferences aren\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-63789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114849322285714730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}