Monkeys with human-like hands can be fooled by simple magic trick

Trained magician Elias Garcia-Pelegrin confirmed how animals’ perceptive programs can simply be tricked.

Garcia-Pelegrin carried out an phantasm for 3 species of New World monkeys together with Humboldt’s squirrel monkeys, widespread marmosets and yellow-breasted capuchins.

The monkeys had been educated to look at the magician deal with an merchandise of meals and choose which of his closed fists had the reward.

Then the magician confirmed the primates the meals with one hand earlier than he both handed it to the opposite or carried out a trick referred to as the French drop.

The French drop includes pretending to move an object from one hand to a different by gripping it between thumb and forefingers.

Both the capuchins and squirrel monkeys appropriately selected the hand with the meals when an actual switch occurred however had been fooled by the phantasm.

Marmosets, which lack opposable thumbs, did not fall for the French drop however had been fooled when the reward was transferred to the opposite hand.

“This exemplifies how our internal biases about movements can be sometimes misleading, and we seem to share this with other primates as well,” Garcia-Pelegrin stated.

“This is what magicians seem to capitalise on by exhibiting these cues but changing the movement’s outcome.

“Magicians can trick us and it seems that monkeys might be fooled as nicely.”