OK, I know you’re sick of me yammering on about the value of video in science communication and what a great tool it is in teaching others how to perform a scientific technique. However, I could not resist pointing out a recent study that showed wild marmosets learning how to open a box to get a food reward—by, you guessed it, watching a methods video!

Tina Gunhold, a cognitive biology researcher at the University of Vienna, filmed captive marmosets retrieving a piece of food from a clear plastic box (representing an artificial fruit) and created a video featuring their techniques for gaining access to the food reward. She and coauthors then set up the box in the field (Brazil) along with a laptop showing the video of laboratory marmosets lifting a lid or opening a drawer to get at the food. The researchers then filmed wild marmosets (108 in all) who either saw the instructional video or served as controls (saw only a static image of a marmoset standing next to the box).

Only twelve of the wild marmosets were able to open the box and get the food. However, of this group, eleven had watched the instructional video and only one of the controls figured it out on her own. The choice of technique by the successful participants did not appear to be random but was predominately the method they saw in the video. Also, the instructional video group showed more attempts at manipulation of the box than did the control group. The researchers described their findings in the journal Biology Letters (Gunhold, T., Whiten, A. & Bugnyar, T. Biol. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0439 (2014)).

The video below shows one group of wild marmosets investigating the experimental setup and their response (Video Credit: Tina Gunhold) (if you cannot see the video player window on your device, you can watch the video here):

The authors conclude: “To our knowledge, this is the first study that used video demonstrations in the wild and demonstrated the potent force of social learning, even from unfamiliar conspecifics, under field conditions.”

Scientist videographers, take note.