'Monkeying Around': Chimps Beat Humans at Tactical Games

Chimps don't "monkey around" when it comes to competitive games. A recent study, published in Scientific Reports, shows that chimpanzees have been known to outperform humans in various competitive contests.

Researchers at Kyoto University Primate Research Institute in Japan and at CalTech carried out the study based on a simple game of hide-and-seek that researchers referred to as the "Inspection Game." In the game, two players (either a pair of chimps or humans) were set back to back, each facing a computer screen.

During each game, the participants looked at the computer screens, which displayed two blue boxes. The match maker's goal was to select the same box as his or her opponent while the other participant was supposed to select a different box, with a goal of detecting patterns in the opponents' moves.

As the game progressed, researchers found that chimps performed better than humans.

"Competition is central in chimpanzee life," said  Caltech graduate student and study coauthor Rahul Bhui, in a news release. "The nice thing about the game theory used in this study is that it allows you to boil down all of these situations to their strategic essence."

Researchers believe that the chimps' instinctual focus on competition may partly explain the creature's superior performance during the games. For humans, on the other hand, they tend to have a more cooperative focus that may put them at a disadvantage for extended competitions.