MOOCs for marmosets, sort of, on branch if not online

Marmosets learn skills from watching instructional videos, at least some marmosets do, provided that someone does show them instructional videos, and further provided that those videos show tasks of interest to the marmosets. Such was the conclusion drawn by humans who did an experiment described by Davide Castelvecci in Nature News:

Marmoset see, marmoset do

Monkeys in the wild learn skills by watching instructional videos.

Marmosets in the wild can learn new behaviours from strangers — monkeys of the same species but who are not part of their social group — as this video shows. Such a feat had so far only been seen in laboratory conditions.

Tina Gunhold, a cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna, and her collaborators got wild marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) from the Pernambuco region of Brazil to learn how to open a box (and get a reward) from watching videos of other marmosets.

The researchers first trained two captured marmosets to get their treat out of the box in two different ways…

The report includes a video, of which this is one frame: