Chimpanzees Show Improved Performance on Difficult Tasks with Human Audiences

A study from Kyoto University reveals that chimpanzees' task performance is influenced by the presence of human observers, suggesting audience effects are not unique to humans.

The research analyzed thousands of sessions over six years involving six chimpanzees performing touchscreen tasks.
Chimpanzees excelled in challenging tasks as the number of human observers increased, highlighting a complex audience effect.
For simpler tasks, chimpanzees performed worse with more people watching, indicating task difficulty influences audience impact.
The study suggests that the audience effect might have evolved before reputation-based societies in great apes.
Further research is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms driving audience-related behaviors in chimpanzees and humans.