Study Finds Apes are Willing to Gamble, Too

While you may have accused one of your poker opponents of acting like a gorilla, chances are that you’ve never actually seen one sitting across the table from you. Nonetheless, it seems that apes can gamble much in the same way humans do – and some even seem to make good decisions in the process.

A study by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics found that chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans can all participate in gambling, and even show some understanding of the odds they’re facing.

In the study, apes were given a choice: they could take a guaranteed small piece of fruit, or gamble for the chance at winning a larger piece of fruit. The gambling portion of the study had the apes choosing between upside down cups, each of which had differently-sized pieces of fruit (or no fruit at all) underneath them.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the apes, on average, gambled about half of the time, which might make the results seem random. However, it turned out that changing the game affected the rate at which the apes chose to gamble. For instance, adding additional cups – thus lowering the chances of getting the biggest piece of fruit – caused the apes to gamble less often, and be more apt to take the guaranteed (if more modest) reward.

On the other hand, when researchers increased the size of the “big” fruit reward the apes could win by gambling, they became more likely to gamble. In fact, with a large enough potential award, the apes would gamble every single time.

According to the report, Chimpanzees and orangutans were the most likely apes to gamble.

“Our study adds to the growing evidence that the mental life of the other great apes is much more sophisticated than is often assumed,” said Daniel Haun, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute.