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Chimpanzees love horror movies too! Apes become so engrossed in violent videos they ignore tasty treats in front of them

Chimps were shown bizarre videos of an actor in a King Kong costume attacking humans in a cage before then stealing bananas from them
A second video showed the humans getting 'revenge' with a hammer
Apes did not cover their eyes or look away like humans do in scary movies
But they became so captivated they forgot to drink juice they were given

By Fiona Macrae, Science Editor For The Daily Mail

Published: 11:01 EST, 17 September 2015 | Updated: 16:39 EST, 17 September 2015

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They may not recognise the music from Psycho or be able to discuss the finer points of the Exorcist but chimps seem to enjoy watching horror films.

When shown videos in which an actor dressed in a King Kong suit attacked a human or was bludgeoned with a hammer by a man, they watched the action intently.

And unlike many human movie-goers, they did not look away or cover their eyes.

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Researchers filmed videos of an actor dressed as King Kong (pictured) attacking a human. When it was shown to chimpanzees they were engrossed and ignored the juice they had been given, much like humans do when watching horror movies. The chimps did not look away or cover their eyes, as gaze tracking showed

In fact, they were so engrossed that they ignored the treats they had been given.

The Japanese researchers said: 'We were giving juice while showing the videos to them but some of them even forgot to drink the juice and stared at the movies.'

WILD CHIMPS GET DRUNK ON SAP

They don’t just like PG tips. Chimps also have a taste for another of our drinks – wine.

For the first time, scientists have filmed them drinking alcohol in the wild.

The primates, caught on tape in West Africa, held afternoon boozing sessions in palm trees.

The animals spent up to half an hour at each supping fermented sap – with the females drinking as much as the males.

Some of the chimps drank so much they became tipsy and settled down for a nap straight afterwards.

The recordings were made by Oxford Brookes University over 17 years in Guinea, where villagers tap palm trees, collect the sap and drink it after it ferments into palm wine.

The tapes show the cheeky chimps raiding the collection containers, which are found high in the trees.

Then then use folded leaves to scoop up the wine and place it in their mouths.

A spokesman for the journal Current Biology said: 'The apes really seemed to enjoy the movies.'

The discovery was made by Kyoto University scientists investigating the long-term memory capacity of chimps and their close relative bonobos.

Twelve apes were shown two specially-prepared films twice, 24-hours apart, while their eye movements were tracked.

In the first film, an actor in a chimp suit burst out of one or two doors in the background, attacked a man in the foreground and stole the banana he was eating.

In the second, it was the 'chimp' that was assaulted.

A man standing near a toy hammer and sword picked up the former and bludgeoned the 'animal'.

The eye-tracking data showed that the apes remembered what they had seen and anticipated the attacks.

On second viewing, they began to look at the door the actor would emerge from a few seconds before the scene was due to start.

They also focused on the hammer – despite the fact it had been moved to a different location.

Twelve chimps were shown the videos (pictured), on two occasions each, to test their long-term memory. The researchers used eye tracking technology to follow where the chimps looked as the action unfolded

The second time the chimps watched the 'revenge' movie - where a human attacks an actor dressed as a King Kong with a toy hammer - the chimps looked between the hammer and the actor in costume (pictured), suggesting they were anticipating what was going to happen in the video

This, said the Kyoto University researchers, is evidence they were able to store information about the films in their long-term memory and retrieve and manipulate it when required.

Other recent research has shown that chimps have other human-like qualities.

They've been filmed drinking alcohol in the wild, with afternoon sap-supping sessions followed by short naps.

It is even claimed that they are intelligent enough to understand cooking and boast all the mental skills needed to cook food - apart from knowing how to control fire.