The claw machine game has been around since the 1920s, and became an instant staple at arcades, amusement parks, boardwalks, carnivals, and more, giving people the chance to win a prize like a stuffed toy, piece of candy, or money.
Now, a group of capuchin monkeys at the Nagasaki Bio Park in Japan have learned how to play the classic arcade claw machine game.
Capuchins are considered the most intelligent New World monkey, and have shown their abilities to use tools in human ways, like using a stone to open a nut.
In December 2021 at the Nagasaki Bio Park in collaboration with the arcade company Wide Leisure (or Kotaku), tufted capuchin monkeys had a claw machine with raisins inside placed in their habitat and tasked with figuring out how to get the food prize.
In the video, you can see the monkeys take turns trying to maneuver the joystick and drop it down to pick up the raisins. After a couple of attempts, a five-year-old male "described by the zoo as curious and interested in new things" was able to grab a cluster of raisins and retrieve them from the dropbox.
During the attempts, one frustrated monkey flipped a chair and another tried to take a bit out of the joystick.
There were a few adjustments made in the game to help the monkeys out. Since it was free, they didn't have to insert any coins to play. Another was that the claw would automatically descend once it stopped being moved, instead of pressing a button.
The study wasn't intended to see their skills at a claw machine game, but if they could figure out how to gain a reward by playing the game.
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