Training primates using television?

J

Jurek7

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I had a strange idea.

Many animals can watch television. Many zoos have TV sets as enrichment for great apes. Dogs and birds sometimes also watch TV, although birds likely have too fast perception to see smooth movement.

When primates are shown videos of desired behaviours, would they imitate them? For example medical training, normal social behavior of hand-reared apes etc.

It is not just practical, but an interesting PR and research project.

For a start, apes could be shown loop video of some novel task (eg. opening red box in preference to the green box, or opening a lock with a key). If apes are then shown real objecs and behave correctly, this would be a proof that they used TV image to learn a new task.

I see it even more useful for lower monkeys, which are more time-consuming to teach and have less direct contact with keepers.

What do you think?
 
You have to stop them fighting over the remote control :D

Seriously, I think video was tried as a way of teaching/training a pregnant hand-reared female gorilla how to look after an infant. However the gorilla showed very little interest. She was trained with a gorilla doll instead.

Alan
 
You may find that if you show them a loop of a red box continually being opened, when presented with the two boxes in real life they may open the green one first to see what's inside.

:p

Hix
 
gentle lemur said:
Seriously, I think video was tried as a way of teaching/training a pregnant hand-reared female gorilla how to look after an infant. However the gorilla showed very little interest. She was trained with a gorilla doll instead.
Click to expand...

I think somewhere with non-breeding Gorillas showed them a video of mating Gorillas in the hope of 'educating' them. Despite the press ballyhoo nothing happened. (of course!)

Twycross and some other places have in the past installed TV sets for their Great Apes to look at. I often wonder whether the Apes really watch or understand what they see on the screen. I've never seen a Gorilla or other primate actually watching even when a TV is playing.
 
The Telegraph magazine reviewed the film "Nenette", starring the orangs at Paris. The film was shown to the orangs and a keeper is quoted as saying that Tubo the male became frightened, youngster Tamu fell asleep, it was hard to say whether Nenette was interested, but Theodora, who lived at Twycross for 18 years, watched right to the end.
 
I recall a visit I made to Twycross in 2002, this was the day of the funeral of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I was informed on arriving at the zoo that they would be observing a two minute silence as a mark of respect at 11 a.m. I spent this time in the gorilla house with Joe, who during this time was watching his television set, I cannot recall him ever watching it before, perhaps just coincidence?.
 
Pertinax said:
I think somewhere with non-breeding Gorillas showed them a video of mating Gorillas in the hope of 'educating' them. Despite the press ballyhoo nothing happened. (of course!)

Twycross and some other places have in the past installed TV sets for their Great Apes to look at. I often wonder whether the Apes really watch or understand what they see on the screen. I've never seen a Gorilla or other primate actually watching even when a TV is playing.
Click to expand...

Spotted this on you tube some time ago. Be interesting to see how he would react if she visited in person :
 
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