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Monkeys have something in common with daredevil teenagers: an aptitude for the聽potentially deadly car driving contest, 鈥渃hicken鈥�.

In the human version of the game, two people drive their cars towards each other down a long, straight road. Whoever turns aside first is the chicken; if neither does, there鈥檚 a head-on crash.

Four macaques were trained to play a version of this nerve-testing game on a computer, getting rewards of fruit juice if they avoid a crash. They were given the most juice if they were the one who didn鈥檛 give up and swerve.

In parallels with human social mores, more submissive monkeys were more likely to swerve. 鈥淗ierarchy really matters,鈥� says , of the University of Pennsylvania. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a bit like James Dean.鈥�

Pairs of macaques played the game while sitting across from each other at a table-top computer screen, using joysticks to control their cars. As well as watching the progress of their cars on the screen below, Ong鈥檚 team found that the monkeys often looked at each other鈥檚 eyes.

Don鈥檛 flinch

Monkeys that were about to yield tended to look to the side of the screen, where their car was about to veer off 鈥� information that could be exploited by their partner to avoid yielding if the other is about to. 鈥淚f one monkey sees the other is looking at the swerve target, we think they are attributing intention to that,鈥� says Ong.

When monkeys played against a computer, rather than each other, more crashes occurred, suggesting that the monkeys do get useful information from the direction of their partner鈥檚 gaze.

Ong says the findings shed more light on macaques鈥� abilities to make deductions about other individuals鈥� mental states 鈥� known as 鈥渢heory of mind鈥� 鈥� a capacity that is most developed in humans. 鈥淔or theory of mind, it helps to be able to follow the gaze,鈥� says Ong. The team鈥檚 findings were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC, this week.

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