Monkeys love watching videos of fights and friends - just like humans

Ever wonder what kind of videos would keep monkeys glued to a screen? Turns out, their preferences aren’t all that different from ours.

A recent study found that long-tailed macaques are especially drawn to watching aggressive behavior and familiar faces – just like us. The findings offer new insight into the social instincts we share with other primates.

The study was led by researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, in collaboration with The Ohio State University.

Inside the monkey theater

The team showed two-minute videos to 28 macaques living at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, the Netherlands.

Each video featured monkeys from the same group or complete strangers, engaged in one of four activities: fighting, grooming, running, or just sitting around.

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’t new or stressful. While watching, researchers tracked how long the monkeys looked at the screen.

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.

Conflict grabs attention

Brad Bushman is co-author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State University.

“Humans and macaques are both social animals who have a fundamental need to belong,” he said. “It’s not surprising that they both would be most interested in the video content that may help them navigate relationships in their groups.”

“We have plenty of research showing the popularity of violent media with humans. Now we have some evidence that other primates might also be attracted to conflict and aggression in videos.”

“From 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,” Bushman added.

Groupmates get more views

The macaques didn’t just favor conflict – they also preferred to watch monkeys they knew. Videos of their own group members got more attention than clips featuring strangers.

“This indicates that gathering social information on group members is more important than getting information about strangers,” said Elisabeth H.M. Sterck, professor of animal behavior and cognition at Utrecht University.

“When we as humans watch movies, we like to see actors we know – we like to see the stars playing in big movies more than we do actors who are not familiar to us,” Bushman said.

Monkey social status

Not all monkeys watched with equal interest. Lower-ranking and less aggressive macaques were more attentive to the videos than their dominant peers.

“More dominant individuals can be more confident that aggression will not affect them – they don’t have to pay attention to others as much,” Sterck said.

“Lower-ranking individuals can become an aggression victim and that may be why they pay more attention to what others are doing in the videos.”

Interestingly, monkeys that were more anxious or easily stressed were less focused on group members.

“We found that the gathering of social information from the videos differed with dominance rank and behavioral tendencies, which may reflect personality,” Sterck said.

A shared curiosity across species

These monkeys, known for their visual acuity, watched the videos on their own terms – walking into the test space voluntarily. Each session was brief, but the pull of conflict on screen was undeniable.

“The macaques are very visual animals. Their eyesight is similar to that of humans, and they are very interested in watching videos,” Sterck said.

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.

“When you see this in some of our closest primate relatives, it is easy to see why humans are so interested in violent media,” said Bushman.

A primate preference for drama

What we see on screen says a lot about who we are – and apparently, that’s true for monkeys too.

In this study, our primate cousins showed they’re drawn to social drama and familiar faces, just like humans sitting down with popcorn for a movie night.

Whether it’s about survival, curiosity, or just plain interest, the content that grabs attention may be more universal than we thought.

The full study was published in the journal Animal Cognition.

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