Male long‐tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) understand the target of facial threat

Abstract

The cognitive demands of group living have resulted in the development of social competences in a wide range of animal species. Primates are well aware of the complex social structure within their group and infer information about social status by observing interactions of others. A capacity used to infer this information, Visual Perspective Taking (VPT), is present in apes and in monkeys. However, it is unclear whether monkeys really understand that another individual is looking at a specific target. We investigated whether monkeys understand the target of attention of conspecifics using a new paradigm, based on expectancy violation. Subjects were exposed to pictures of scenes involving group members. These pictures either represented congruent (agonistic signals consistent with the dominance hierarchy) or incongruent (signals contradict the dominance hierarchy) social situations. The only difference between scenes concerned the looking direction, that is, the target of attention, and facial expression of the central monkey in the picture. Female subjects did not differ in their looking times to incongruent and congruent scenes, but results may be confounded by their longer looking times at scenes involving kin than non-kin. Male subjects looked significantly longer at incongruent than congruent scenes, suggesting that they understand the target of attention of other individuals. Alternative explanations involving simpler cognitive capacities were excluded. This implies that monkey species share social cognitive capacities underlying VPT with apes and humans. Am. J. Primatol. 78:720-730, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The evolutionary origins of syntax: Event cognition in nonhuman primates

“…Similar results were found for zoo-housed chimpanzees, where call sequences portrayed agonistic interactions between differently ranking group members ( 86 ). When viewing visual scenarios of conspecifics depicting congruent social information (dominant group mate threatening a subordinate) or incongruent information (subordinate group mate threatening a dominant), male long-tailed macaques (but not females) looked longer toward the incongruent than the congruent scenes ( 87 ). Conversely, monkeys did not differentiate between congruent and incongruent scenarios depicting bared teeth rather than open-mouth expressions.…”

Comparing physical and social cognitive skills in macaque species with different degrees of social tolerance

“…[28,[30][31][32] or from congeners: e.g. [33][34][35]; see also the review from [36]), understand the target of attention [37]) and seem to be capable of visual perspective taking (e.g. [38,39]), they can cooperate to solve a string-pulling task [40] but do not seem to show any indication of imitation in some social learning tests [29,30].…”

Competition for grooming partners and interference in affiliation among female mandrills

“…In terms of cognition, frequent interference implies constant monitoring of others' social interactions, and presumably an understanding of the state of their relationships. However, we know very little about social monitoring and about how animals obtain their social knowledge (Overduin-de Vries, Bakker, Spruijt, & Sterck, 2016;Schino & Sciarretta, 2016;Tiddi, Polizzi di Sorrentino, Fischer, & Schino, 2017). In terms of ultimate function, the exact costs and benefits of social interference and social monitoring are still only vaguely understood.…”