Chimpanzees learn from video demo

Just saw this post on BBC News, that talks about Chimps building their own tools after watching video demostrations. The Chimps were broken up into several groups and shown progressively shorter video of less information. To their findings, the group of chimps who had see the full video can easily replicate what they had seen and build the tools easily, while a handful of those exposed to less information can build the tool. Then the reseachers noticed an interesting phenomenon.

"What was interesting about this group was that, when we presented them with the grape at different distances from the cage, they made the appropriate tool to reach it. Those that had been shown the full demonstration, and had socially learned to make the longer tool, continued to make it even when the grape was so close that it was more awkward to use."

"It could be that social learning is such a strong force for the chimps that they apply a blanket rule of 'go with what you've seen' (rather than work out what's most appropriate for the task)."

They are now trying to test their findings on young children and personally i think they're just going to get the same results. I think the chimps are totally demostrating what human beings will do if they are exposed to the same thing. We quickly accept and settle on a single solution that was taught by others, usually without questioning why was it done in that way. We are usually lazy to think so we will just follow what has proven to be useful. Very often when i questioned why certain friends did something, they will answer ,"I never think so much la". This answer never fails to irritate me. The group of chimps that built their own tools have thought through the process and understand what needs to be done and why, thus able to come up with the more efficient method.

In fact there were some research done that asked participants to draw what they were shown on the screen. They will be shown pictures of a real kitten and the outcome of their drawings will be a caricature of a kitten, simple line works that most easily represents a cat. They were then hypnotized or using some scientific method (i do not know how) to temporary clear their memories, this time round, the same participants dutifully drew out what they seen on screen, rather than some caricatures of it. This experiment shows how what we have seen and learnt affect what we will do in the future. How when we faced with different task on hand that we may end up using the same solution even when they may not match.

I often hear people commenting that if you want to design only functional things (things people really need), then you do not need to design anything because we already have everything. Well they are right and wrong, because of the reason stated above, a lot of things around us are done without much thoughts, we call those conventional wisdoms. As the world progress, people changed, technology improved but many things still remain. By spotting these, we can surely find opportunities for new products/ design that makes sense.