IF YOU want to attract a monkey鈥檚 attention, try copying everything it does. But don鈥檛 expect the monkey to play along with the game because it won鈥檛 understand why it finds your antics so captivating.
Experiments with 10 pig-tailed macaques show that they notice when they are being imitated, but probably don鈥檛 have the complexity of thought to register how or why someone is copying them.
Annika Paukner of the University of Stirling, UK, and colleagues in Italy gave each of the monkeys a wooden cube to play with. Two people in front of the cage handled matching cubes. One immediately copied everything the monkey did with the block, while the other made random movements. The monkeys spent around 50 per cent more time watching the imitator, confirming that they were aware there is something odd about being aped (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0291).
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But unlike chimps and 14-month-old babies, they didn鈥檛 check they were being copied by attempting to 鈥渢hrow鈥� the imitator. 鈥淚f you know someone is imitating you, you might test whether that鈥檚 what they鈥檙e doing by trying to throw them with sudden, unpredictable actions,鈥� says Paukner. This probably means that they lack 鈥渢heory of mind鈥�, the ability to recognise and second-guess the mental processes of others, she says.
