Chimpanzees are show-offs! Apes perform better with an audience

From comedians to singers, some people just perform better in front of a crowd.

Now, experts have discovered that this phenomenon can be traced back to our ape ancestors.

Researchers found that chimpanzees' performance on computer tasks is influenced by the number of people watching them.

And the findings suggest that this 'audience effect' predates the development of human societies who worry about reputation, they said.

A team from Kyoto University in Japan analysed thousands of sessions recorded at a study site over six years where chimpanzees completed a touchscreen task.

'Our study site is special in that chimpanzees frequently interact with and even enjoy the company of humans here, participating almost daily in various touch screen experiments for food rewards,' author Akiho Muramatsu said.

'As such, we saw the opportunity to not only explore potential similarities in audience-related effects but also to do so in the context of chimps that share unique bonds with humans.'

They found that the chimps performed better on the most difficult task as the number of people watching them increased.

On the other hand they found that during the easiest task, the chimps performed worse when being watching by more experimenters.

Researcher Christen Lin said: 'It was very surprising to find that chimpanzees are affected in their task performance by audience members, and by human audience members nonetheless.

'One might not expect a chimp to particularly care if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected.'

The researchers said it remains unclear what specific mechanisms underlie these audience-related effects, even for humans.

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It is known that people pay attention to who is watching them, sometimes even subconsciously, in ways that affect their performance.

Shinya Yamamoto, who also worked on the study, said: 'Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audience members may not be quite so specific to our species.

'These characteristics are a core part of how our societies are largely based on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay special attention towards audience members while they perform their tasks, it stands to reason that these audience-based characteristics could have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage.'

The findings were published in the journal iScience.

WHICH ARE SMARTER: CHIMPS OR CHILDREN?

Most children surpass the intelligence levels of chimpanzees before they reach four years old.

A study conducted by Australian researchers in June 2017 tested children for foresight, which is said to distinguish humans from animals.

The experiment saw researchers drop a grape through the top of a vertical plastic Y-tube.

They then monitored the reactions of a child and chimpanzee in their efforts to grab the grape at the other end, before it hit the floor.

Because there were two possible ways the grape could exit the pipe, researchers looked at the strategies the children and chimpanzees used to predict where the grape would go.

The apes and the two-year-olds only covered a single hole with their hands when tested.

But by four years of age, the children had developed to a level where they knew how to forecast the outcome.

They covered the holes with both hands, catching whatever was dropped through every time.