Capuchin Monkeys in Costa Rica Use AI Touchscreen for Food Rewards

Wild capuchin monkeys in a Costa Rican forest reserve are interacting with an automated, AI-driven touchscreen platform that dispenses food rewards for completed tasks. Published in The American Journal of Primatology, the initiative bridges a long-standing gap between controlled laboratory experiments and the unpredictable realities of animal behavior in the wild. Researchers from Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology designed the system to automate cognitive testing while tracking individual primates across their natural habitats.

How CapuchinAI Operates in the Taboga Forest Reserve

The system, designated as CapuchinAI, integrates a compact, battery-powered computing unit into an outdoor field research platform located in the Taboga Forest Reserve of northeastern Costa Rica. When an animal approaches the hardware, the system identifies an approaching monkey, presents a learning task tailored to that individual on an interactive touchscreen, and automatically dispenses a food reward if the animal executes the task correctly. The entire outdoor setup can operate for about eight hours on a lightweight battery pack, according to field reports.

To train the model, undergraduate students at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology performed the labor-intensive task of digitally placing bounding boxes around the faces of monkeys captured in high-definition GoPro footage. Through this process, the facial-recognition framework learned to identify individual capuchins with 97 percent accuracy from static images, recorded video, and live footage in the field.

Behavioral Responses and the Discovery of Screen Kissing

During field trials involving sixteen wild capuchins, the animals exhibited varied learning curves and engagement styles. Initial interaction required coaxing; researchers placed a blue square on the display so that when an animal touched it, the equipment recorded the interaction and released a piece of dried banana. For the first two days, the monkeys largely ignored the device.

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The breakthrough came courtesy of a large male capuchin named Trompudo, whose moniker translates to “big snout.” He climbs on the box and starts slapping the back of it, researcher Federico Sánchez Vargas recalled. Finally, he slaps the touchscreen and a banana slice pops out.

“He was almost like you could see him realising, ‘Ah, that’s what you have to do, touch the screen!’ It was amazing to watch an individual learn something so quickly.”

Federico Sánchez Vargas, Emory University

Following Trompudo’s discovery, other troop members approached the apparatus. While some cautious animals watched their companions before participating, others developed unorthodox interaction methods. Observers documented monkeys using their lips to trigger the display, effectively kissing the screen to prompt a banana slice delivery.

Expanding Cognitive Testing and Environmental Pressures

With the hardware functioning reliably, the research team is expanding the scope of testing to examine multiple facets of animal intelligence.

This technological deployment unfolds against a backdrop of intensifying environmental challenges for Costa Rican primates. Long-term field observations—including a 33-year study centered near the Lomas de Barbudal Biological Reserve—indicate that extreme climate events like El Niño severely restrict food availability and alter social dynamics within tropical dry forests. This study found that climatic extremes compounded the ecological stresses on capuchin groups, and were not beneficial for capuchin welfare or survival, noted Laura Bolt, a primatologist at the University of Toronto.