OUR 'COUSINS' THE CAPUCHIN MONKEYS HAVE SMART CHOICES

Capuchin monkeys also prefer to use tools

[Reproduced from www.oeco.org.br]

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That Capuchins are smart animals everyone knows. But the intelligence of these small new world Primate continues to amaze. Recently, researchers at the University of Georgia, United States, released a study that helps you understand how capuchin monkeys-yellow (Sapajus libidinosus) choose and us

e tools in feeding time. Published in the journal PLOS One, the study demonstrates the cleverness of these animals.

In the first step of the study, researchers marked babassu young coconuts so they know what position they would stop rolling on a flat surface. In the next step, they let the monkeys spontaneously they caught the coconut and put it on the right position. The first surprise was discovering that they also chose the most stable position, that is, they were able to find it by itself.

The Capuchin monkey beats with a rock in the fruit and with the hand he positions the fruit again, correctly.


For the researchers, this behavior indicates that the monkeys don't use the vision to pick out the best position, but use the sensitivity of fingers and hearing, while the eyes are watching the environment around.

Researchers marked the babassu nuts for later comparison with the position chosen by the monkeys to break them