Hi everyone!
I've always been fascinated by the cognitive abilities of non-human primates, particularly Ayumu, the chimpanzee known for his extraordinary performance in visual-memory tasks, and Kanzi, the bonobo famous for his use of lexigrams and his understanding of human language. Two very different individuals, two remarkable examples of how complex and diverse primate cognition can be.
Their abilities inspired me to create The Kanzi–Ayumu Protocol, an experimental Android game that explores visual memory, symbolic recognition, command interpretation and cognitive flexibility. Memorize sequences. Decode symbols. Follow commands. Adapt when the rules mutate. Of course, this isn't a scientific experiment, nor does it attempt to reproduce the actual research protocols or directly compare human and non-human intelligence. It's a game, loosely inspired by these fascinating studies, and perhaps a small invitation to question some of our assumptions about what makes human cognition so special.

The game works offline, with an optional global leaderboard. There's a free introductory mode (Observation Mask) and an unlockable full version. I'd be particularly interested in hearing what people familiar with primatology think about this kind of project.

Can games inspired by primate cognition help spark curiosity about the intelligence of other species? Or do they risk oversimplifying what makes these abilities so remarkable?

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts, including criticisms!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kanziayumu.protocol

Apologies for the vague question and my ignorance and I appreciate that they're two completely different scenarios and animals. But why was Harambe shot and Altai the tiger who mauled a man recently was given warning shots to scare him off. Would this not have worked with a gorilla?

Wasn’t sure if it would be acceptible to mention here but The Guardian just did a nice write-up about my new primates zine, Ape Shit.

I should perhaps point out that Ape Shit is not focused on primatology —  it is coming more from the humanities (media studies, social criticism, history), albeit informed by primate science and its evolution/history.

I tend to post in this forum because there's not an Animal Studies subreddit and the r/anthrozoology seems to be dead.

Gulf Coast is legit. They don’t let the primates free roam their home, they have monkey safe areas/enclosures, they don’t treat them like humans, they don’t diaper and clothe them, they don’t use them for profit in any way. Gulf Coast is one of the only legit education primate owners that are true to teaching why shouldn’t get a primate. They don’t just use words; they show in how their monkeys live. If you want to support and donate to a good cause, Gulf Coast is the place. I haven’t found another that is a true advocate for primates. They all say it, but when they do what Gulf Coast has done, they are clearly not in it for the right reasons. Stop supporting every person that says they are educational or trying to teach. Compare them to Gulf Coast. If they aren’t providing this kind of life for the primates: they are not legit and not in it for the right reasons.
Note: Monkey Heartland and Nefreyu’s are both also legit. Their monkeys are also treated and respected as monkeys.

My hypothesis is that if it were possible to measure online behaviour and compare it to chimpanzees, baboons, and several other primate species we would find virtually no difference in terms of empathy, altruism, and all those other characteristics we tend to associate with our species. Any ideas about what sort of instrument could be used to make such measurements to test the hypothesis?

See also: The publication in PLOS Computational Biology

Photo by Chris Ulliott/flickr. 

When a researcher at the University of Wisconsin tried to study the abilities of pygmy marmosets, the monkeys solved challenges quickly but quickly grew bored and simply sat in the middle of the mazes, refusing to participate further. (What’s that about a “lower” primate?) The study had to be canceled. 

From ”The Accidental Primatologist” by Charles T. Snowden in Primate Ethnographies, edited by Karen B Strier (Routledge, 2016). Via Ape Shit zine.

Indris are among the rare nonhuman mammals known to have a sense of rhythm, expressed thru song. These lemurs urinate and defecate jointly as a group in one of their territory's designated pee spots. Critically endangered in Madagascar, they don’t survive captivity. (Sam Whitfield/flickr) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indri

In November 2025, two young macaques died in a 104-degree room at a Florida biomedical facility. They couldn't escape the heat. Weeks later, another monkey was left in a biohazard dumpster for five days with no food or water.

These aren't accidents—they're symptoms of a broken system. Nearly 100,000 primates were imported for lab testing between 2021-2024, often from sources tied to illegal trafficking and disease risks. These imports also expose workers and communities to dangerous pathogens like tuberculosis and herpes B.

I started a petition urging the House Ways and Means Committee to pass H.R. 8471, the PRIMATE Act. It would ban most primate imports for experimentation while protecting both animals and public health. These intelligent beings deserve safety, not suffering in cages.

Does this sit right with you? If it matters to you too, consider signing and sharing—let's push lawmakers to make this real.

After seeing her family slaughtered, Congo, once in captivity in the US, grew fixated on a mirror. Robert Yerkes interpreted her "infinite loneliness" as "mental deficiency," concluding that gorillas are inferior to chimps.

Yerkes wrote about Congo in The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life (1929). See also: Georgina M. Montgomery, "Infinite Loneliness: the life and times of Miss Congo." Endeavor. 28 July 2009.

Is that true or just made up? I tried looking it up but browser just showed a short list of very irrelevant results

Let's get rid of the humans in this setting (let's say they just disappeared) as well. Would chimps be able to survive any where in Europe?

Pan paniscus también conocido como bonobo (anteriormente conocido como chimpancé pigmeo), es un primate homínido que comparte el 98.7% de su ADN con los humanos. Junto con el chimpancé común (Pan troglodytes), es nuestro pariente vivo más cercano en el reino animal. A diferencia de los chimpancés comunes, los bonobos son famosos por sus estructuras sociales matriarcales y pacíficas.

SAY HIS WORDS

I know that primatologist don’t use “monkey” as a cladistic term but as more of an ecological term but it works better as a cladistic term. Apes are in the monkey clade. They are closer to old world monkeys than old-world monkeys are to new world monkeys.
I understand that some people think of it as more of an ecological term than a phylogenetic term but the ecology of monkeys isn’t that similar. Gibbons are apes but behaviorally act way more like non-ape monkeys. And baboons still have their tail but are less arboreal and ecologically different from other monkeys.
I get that the distinction is because of the no-tail and higher intelligence of apes but sometimes humans and other apes are born with vestigial tails and another family of non-ape monkeys could also evolve to lose their tails or become more intelligent.

I know we have the word “simian” that means the same thing as what I’m proposing but that word isn’t common usage and when the average person hears “apes aren’t monkeys”, they will assume the person will assume it means that they are a separate family and not that there’s a dumb rule that arbitrarily excludes part of the family for not having a tail. I know it’s a linguistic issue and not a science issue but the point of linguistics is to communicate ideas and the “apes aren’t monkeys” linguistics fails at that. People should NEVER say apes aren’t monkeys without explaining that “monkey” isn’t a cladistic term.

The field seriously needs to have a “Pluto is a dwarf planet”/“birds are dinosaurs” moment

Did you know over 80 species of wild primates have been observed "keeping pets"? 🐒

A new study found that primates aren't just interacting with other animals in the wild. They're actually petting, playing with, and grooming them, and the primates usually initiate. While most of these encounters were short-term, researchers also documented a few long-term friendships and even "adoptions." Since this wasn't a formal experiment, these observations in our closest evolutionary cousins offer a rare clue to the mystery of why humans started keeping pets in the first place.