{"id":438630,"date":"2026-05-08T11:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438630\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:48:13","slug":"scientists-stumped-as-monkeys-play-video-game-without-expecting-reward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438630\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists stumped as monkeys play video game without expecting reward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monkeys<\/a> voluntarily spent long periods playing a touchscreen video game <\/a>for a new study<\/a>, driven purely by curiosity<\/a> without any food reward, leaving scientists stumped.<\/p>\n

The findings, according to researchers, can lead to a better understanding of how curiosity drives animal behaviour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Curiosity operates independent of extrinsic rewards<\/a> like food or mating opportunities and drives animals to explore their environments.<\/p>\n

But exactly how some parts of any animal\u2019s environment sparks more curiosity than others remains unclear.<\/p>\n

Researchers theorise that curiosity tends to be biased toward moderately complex or uncertain stimuli while avoiding overly simple or complex situations.<\/p>\n

This is called the “Goldilocks principle\u201d and also characterises human curiosity.<\/p>\n

However, very few studies have explored this impulse in animals.<\/p>\n

\"Monkey<\/p>\n

Monkey playing video game (KyotoU\/Sakumi Iki)<\/p>\n

Scientists from Japan\u2019s Kyoto University assessed how curiosity works in monkeys by exposing them to a touchscreen video game.<\/p>\n

In recent years, video games have emerged as tools to help train cognitive abilities and improve the quality of life for humans.<\/p>\n

Studies have also explored whether video games can spark the engagement of animals in laboratories and zoos, and potentially help improve their welfare.<\/p>\n

“I originally studied play behaviour in wild monkeys, so I have long wanted to create situations in the laboratory where monkeys’ play behaviour could emerge naturally,\u201d explained Sakumi Iki, an author of the study published in the journal iScience.<\/p>\n

Researchers probed exactly what kind of stimuli could elicit the curiosity of resident Japanese macaques.<\/p>\n

They developed a touchscreen-based game task inspired by hide-and-seek.<\/p>\n

In this game, when a monkey presses a button on the touchscreen, a puppet appears at a different location on the screen, depending on the button.<\/p>\n

The puppet appearances correspond to different levels of noise, with puppets appearing in a less predictable location the higher the noise level.<\/p>\n

Scientists observed the monkeys\u2019 responses to medium versus low noise, then medium versus high noise.<\/p>\n

They found that the monkeys chose the medium noise button, which made the puppet appear in a location that was somewhat predictable but still moderately uncertain.<\/p>\n

This suggests that macaques, like humans, have a tendency to actively explore stimuli with a moderate level of uncertainty compared to stimuli that are too simple or too random.<\/p>\n

The monkeys also spent long stretches of time playing the game, supporting the game’s success in sparking their curiosity.<\/p>\n

“In typical cognitive tasks, monkeys are usually given food rewards to keep them motivated, so I was not very confident they would engage with the game without rewards,” Dr Iki says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet surprisingly, some monkeys worked on this game for nearly 100 trials even without any reward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In future studies, researchers hope to apply the findings to develop more games that attract the monkeys’ curiosity.<\/p>\n

They hope to identify the neural and cognitive mechanisms behind curiosity to gain a \u201cmore comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monkeys voluntarily spent long periods playing a touchscreen video game for a new study, driven purely by curiosity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4338,191215,191216,191217,61,60,191214,82,61590],"class_list":["post-438630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-animal-behaviour","tag-extrinsic-rewards","tag-food-reward","tag-human-curiosity","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-playing-the-game","tag-science","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}