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HomeNewsPublications
  • December 21st 2022

    The PrimateCast 76: Dr. Elaine Guevara on Primate Eponyms

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  • December 9th 2022

    The PrimateCast Origins (75): Professor Mewa Singh on his half-century journey into primatology and wildlife biology

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  • November 17th 2022

    The PrimateCast (74): Dr. Briana Pobiner on what makes us human, paleontological time machines and bigging up science education

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  • November 1st 2022

    The PrimateCast Origins (73): Dr. John Mitani on his life among the apes

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  • October 19th 2022

    The PrimateCast 72: Dr. Charles (Chuck) Snowdon on what music means to us, and monkeys!

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  • October 12th 2022

    The PrimateCast 71: Dr. Pamela Asquith on language, anthropomorphism, and metaphor in science, and translating Kinji Imanishi and the flow of Japanese primatology

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  • August 21st 2022

    The PrimateCast #70: Dr. Karen Strier on weaving between theory and practice in behavioral ecology and conservation

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  • July 27th 2022
    Takeshi Furuichi with local kids at Wamba Village in the DRC

    The PrimateCast #69: Dr. Takeshi Furuichi on bonobos, Wamba Village in the DRC, and building theories of human behavioral evolution

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  • July 1st 2022
    Dr. Elisabetta Visalberghi on the PrimateCast

    The PrimateCast #68: Dr. Elisabetta Visalberghi on Being a Primate, Becoming a Primatologist

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  • June 17th 2022
    Susumu Tomiya descends into Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming

    The PrimateCast #67: Dr. Susumu Tomiya on paleontology, the past, present and future of biodiversity, beardogs, and doing and communicating science

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  • May 8th 2022

    The PrimateCast #66: Dr. Robin Dunbar on how the social brain evolved

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  • April 22nd 2022

    The PrimateCast #65: Dr. Ikuma Adachi on Comparative Cognition and Managing a Chimpanzee Research Program

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International Primatology Lecture 19: Prof. Patrícia Izar
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Chimpanzees compete using game theory

June 9th 2014
Publications
Chimpanzees compete using game theory

A new study in Scientific Reports has shown that chimpanzees outperform humans in their ability to utilize game theory– a form of mathematics that deals with determining optimal strategies when faced with competitive situations.

The study, led by former CICASP research associate Christopher Flynn Martin and Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa in collaboration with a team of behavioral economists at California Institute of Technology, investigated the strategic reasoning abilities of six chimpanzees at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute. The chimpanzees played in pairs a series of abstract competitive games, known as match/mismatch games, over interconnected computer touch-screens.

In addition to the chimpanzee participants, the researchers also tested a group of 16 students at Kyoto University and a group of 12 west African villagers in Bossou, Guinea. The zero-sum competitive games used in the study were designed to test the abilities of players to predict the behavior of their opponent, and to themselves evade prediction.

Why should chimpanzees care about math?

Game theorists have determined that there is optimal strategy that can be utilized to nullify one’s opponent’s chances of gaining an edge. This strategy is known as the Nash Equilibrium, named after the Nobel Prize–winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. The chimpanzees were shown to perform in line with the Nash equilibrium by creating sophisticated sequences of choices that matched the theoretical benchmark, while the human participants did not perform similarly.

What might explain such a result? One possibility, according the study, is that the dominance mediated social environment of chimpanzees may serve to make them expert tacticians with an intuitive sense of game theory. Humans, on the other hand, are more socially cooperative and egalitarian.

Click here to see the original article in Scientific Reports.

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CICASP, 41-2, Kanrin,
Inuyama, Aichi,
484-8506 Japan
Phone: +81 (0)568-63-0284
Fax: +81 (0)568-61-1050
Email: cicasp [at] mail2 [dot] adm [dot] kyoto-u [dot] ac [dot] jp

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