Sleight-of-hand magic trick only fools monkeys with opposable thumbs

Serious amateur magician here (magician member of the Magic Castle). Note that the trick done for the monkeys is not done the way that a real magician would do the trick to fool a human. The French Drop actually can have surprisingly deep subtleties. To fool a human, you would hold the coin between your thumb and forefinger so that there is a visible gap between the bottom of the coin and the palm of the hand holding it into which it will be dropped. Then the hand that grabs the coin is moved into place in a smooth continuous motion, covering this gap very briefly, during which time the coin is dropped. The key is that the gap is visible during most of this motion, after which the grasping hand pauses briefly before closing the thumb and forefingers to "grasp" the (now missing) coin. The key to making it convincing is that the trick actually happens before the dramatic pause before grasping the coin, but the pause focuses the spectator's attention on the fact that during the pause the gap is visible, making it "impossible" for the coin to be dropped without being seen. It's considered one of the most elementary of tricks, but it's actually quite challenging to do properly. In the hands of a skilled magician it can be very convincing even when you know how it's done.

Magic is an art with vastly more subtlety and attention to detail than it generally appreciated by muggles.

> “There is increasing evidence that the same parts of the nervous system used when we perform an action are also activated when we watch that action performed by others,”

Certainly there has to be a 'theory of operation' in the viewers mind for the trick to work. One way is by having first-hand familiarity with the mechanics. I'd be curious if the trick would work on an animal very familiar with human mechanics but no thumbs, say a smart breed of dog.

Completely anecdotal, but the best magic "show" I "attended" was a close-up magician at a medieval fair. During his show the crowd grew dramatically and inched closer and closer to his little table. No fence no nothing, so in the end the closest guys basically had their noses touching his coins and cards.

He ended his show with a snarky "of course i am messing with you ... these are magic coins, see? ... this one is this big from one side and ..." [flips coin on the table, no toss, just a simple half turn] "... and this big [larger] from the other".

I don't have the faintest idea how he did any of his tricks. People were watching him from inches away from every angle even from behind.

10/10 would watch again.

The proper title for this article should be "sleight of hand magic tricks involving opposable thumbs only fool monkeys with opposable thumbs"

This "Title Fluffing" trend is quite annoying

Kind of reminds me of a video I saw on Twitter of someone doing a super-simple shell game trick with a mountain lion and the lion’s favorite toy. Frankly, I expected the lion to react to the missing toy by biting the human’s face off.

This research is really just done with only 3 species and jumped to conclusions at once?

I haven't read the study, but I think there is an extremely high chance that this is showing confirmation bias. And i feel the video they show supports this interpretation. I don't know monkeys so didn't know which ones had opposable thumbs but felt just from the hand movement that I understood when the researcher intended the monkey to follow the moving hand and when the researcher didn't, moving the hand more significantly when wanting the money to focus on it, and damping the movement when wanting it to focus on the still hand.

If they didn't already do this, they should train some people to perform the trick that doesn't know the difference between the monkeys and don't know what the expected outcome is based on their current hypothesis.

Best HN subject title of the year?

I'm reminded of the radio lab episode about the color blue which suggests that ancient cultures without the ability to make blue dye don't perceive that color (at the very least, they didn't have a word for it).

Manipulation and perception appear to be quite linked.

Interesting research.

> The research suggest that sharing a biomechanical ability may be necessary for accurately anticipating the movements of those same limbs in other individuals.

I wonder if it's really about sharing a biomechanical ability, or just being familiar with a bicomechanical ability. They're familiar with how their oposable-thumbed hands work, and then can relate to how human hands work.

But, if a non-oposable monkey was raised alongside another species that did have opposable thumbs, would they be familar enough with how opposable thumbs can operate - and therefore get fooled.

> Illusion involving a hidden thumb confounds capuchin and squirrel monkeys for the same reason as humans – it misdirects the expected outcomes of actions they can carry out.

To be fair. As a human I would state you expect it to be a trick (a very easy one to spot in this case) and you can easily infer that the coin just _drops_ into the hand it was to start with. It does not feel that it has anything todo with what actions you can carry out. The coin is either grabbed by the non-coin hand or not, it depends on the magician, right?

I have to say I love a good magic show. Like illusionists stuff is so cool to me even though I realize I’m just getting played the fool.

Card tricks in particular I love. I could watch someone do card tricks all day.

Does anyone know a good way to dabble in learning card tricks? I’d love to try and hone the skill myself

This video is of incredibly poor quality? It's hard to understand what the magician is doing, also it is quite clear that the coin is in his left hand (right side of the screen).

Was the trick also done so poorly when used on monkeys too?

Now I'm curious if you can teach either sleight-of-hand trick to the monkeys.