How chimpanzees look at movies: The "Art and Science" project in Kyoto City Zoo

Abstract

We introduce a unique art-science collaboration project organized by contemporary artists and comparative psychologists at Kyoto City Zoo in 2019. The objectives of this project were to evaluate how chimpanzees and humans respond to movies created by professional artists and to contribute to an outreach event at the zoo by demonstrating the entire research process to the public. We asked the artists to make short movies 'for chimpanzees' and presented those movies to chimpanzee and human participants while tracking the participants' eye movements using an eye-tracker. Both chimpanzees and humans looked at similar elements of movies, such as appearance of animal figures, targets of actions, and the center of abstract concentric figures. The differences between chimpanzees and humans were also pronounced; for example, human showed strong 'center bias' by keeping their gaze around the center of the screen, while chimpanzee did so to a lesser extent. This study not only offered comparative knowledge about responses to (artistic) movies in chimpanzees and humans but demonstrated how non-scientists can learn comparative psychology through an outreach project.