In Photos: Adorable Marmoset Monkeys Learn to Solve Banana Puzzle

Social marmosets — (Image credit: Tina Gunhold)

Miniature theater

marmoset theater — (Image credit: Tina Gunhold)

The researchers set up a compartment with a laptop screen in 12 family group territories in the Brazilian forest. Once the marmosets became familiar with the box, the researchers showed the monkeys either a video or a still-image of a marmoset opening a box.

Movie time

Marmosets watching movie — (Image credit: Tina Gunhold)

The wild marmosets watched the video or saw the still-image before they encountered the box with a banana sitting inside.

Instructional video

A wild marmoset watches an unfamiliar female marmoset pull open a drawer to get a banana prize.

How-to basics

With the clear box in front of it, a wild marmoset watches another marmoset open the box and grab a banana treat inside of it.

Banana success

banana marmoset — (Image credit: Tina Gunhold)

A wild marmoset eats a banana after pulling open the drawer on a puzzle box. It's possible that the marmoset learned how to open the box after watching a video of another marmoset do the same thing.

Peek-a-boo

Marmoset peeking — (Image credit: Tina Gunhold)

A wild marmoset pokes its head outside of the compartment used in the social learning experiment. The study helps researchers understand how marmosets may learn from one another in the wild.

Laura is the managing editor at Live Science. She also runs the archaeology section and the Life's Little Mysteries series. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a site on autism research. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly newspaper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in science writing from NYU.