To diffuse the situation, don't make eye contact or smile with your teeth showing—in the nonhuman primate world, these are almost always signs of aggression. Monkey attacks are extremely rare in the wild; the creatures tend to be scared of us and often scamper away when a person gets within 100 feet.
In most primates, eye contact is an implicit signal of threat, and often connotes social status and imminent physical aggression. However, in humans and some of the gregarious nonhuman primates, eye contact is tolerated more and may be used to communicate other emotional and mental states.
To mountain gorillas, any person who keeps direct eye contact with them is a challenger and an enemy who comes to destroy the family. Direct eye contact will therefore force the silverback to charge and fight you in order to defend his family. If you want to be peaceful with gorillas, you should avoid eye contact.
Very frequently we are asked if eye contact is OK with chimpanzees. Well, it is! And they make eye contact quite frequently. It's one way they communicate with us.
From a dog's point of view, a stranger who makes eye contact is a potential threat. If the dog has a dominant personality, they could react aggressively. Even if the dog isn't especially dominant, they can still feel threatened and choose to fight instead of flee.
Staring Can Make a Dog Feel Challenged
For a dog, a stranger staring at them might be seen as a challenge, threat, or something to make them uneasy. They may even fear you could be trying to take a resource, such as a toy or chew, away from them.
Eyes on the side of the head give prey a larger field of vision. Prey can see more around them, helping prey to notice predators that may be sneaking up or approaching them.
Interpreting a Chimp Smile
Surprisingly, chimpanzee smiles signify fear. When chimps bare both their top and bottom teeth, though it may look like a goofy grin, scientists have come to understand this expression as a “fear grimace.” Chimps make this face when they're afraid, anxious, or uncertain.
Among primates, eye contact is seen as especially aggressive, and staring at them in a zoo can induce agitated behavior. Chimpanzees use eye contact to signal aggression in hostile encounters.
Because golden langurs tend to avoid human contact, little is known about the economic importance they provide for humans.
To diffuse the situation, don't make eye contact or smile with your teeth showing—in the nonhuman primate world, these are almost always signs of aggression. Monkey attacks are extremely rare in the wild; the creatures tend to be scared of us and often scamper away when a person gets within 100 feet.
Direct eye contact can, therefore, trigger the silverback to charge and fight you in defense of his family. If you want peace with gorillas, avoid direct eye contact with gorillas. Also, the gorilla is naturally very shy creatures.
“If you smile at a rhesus monkey it may interpret your show of teeth as an aggressive gesture and respond violently.”
We tried a “chimpanzee smile” by covering our top teeth and showing our bottom teeth. It felt pretty silly to do, but they explained that a human smile is seen as a threatening expression to chimpanzees.
Although smiling is often associated with submissive or non-aggressive behavior in gorillas, eye contact is a practice that is discouraged by primatologists, as apes are likely to interpret eye contact as a challenge or a form of aggressive display.
If you encounter an aggressive lion, stare him down. But not a leopard; avoid his gaze at all costs. In both cases, back away slowly; don't run. If you stumble on a pack of hyenas, run and climb a tree; hyenas can't climb trees.
Monkeys, apes and other simians have nothing quite like our tears. They have tear ducts to help keep their eyes lubricated and clean. But they don't drain when they're sad. Chimps will scrunch up their faces and make noise when they're in distress, but they don't connect the tears and the wailing.
Myth: Chimps can smile like humans do.
Chimps make this expression when they are afraid, unsure, stressed, or wanting to appear submissive to a more dominant troop member. The closest expression chimps have to a smile is a play face.
It is easy to tell when a chimp gets mad: they become aroused and perform conspicuous displays and noisy tantrums. The researchers found that the chimpanzees were more likely to collapse the table when they were aroused than when they were calm.
Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way. And it works. Researchers studying people's closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation.
Naturally, this restricts hugging to animals with arms — and those are mainly primates, like us. This quickly reveals that, while we might see hugs as a uniquely human trait, hugging is actually just as prominent in the lives of nonhuman primates.
Sometimes they're looking for a signal that you might be about to take them for a walk or feed them a meal. If you've trained your dog to respond to hand or voice signals, they might be waiting for a signal to tell them what to do next. Other times, they're just observing you so that they can know more about you.
Dogs have several reasons for staring at their owners, like to communicate with and understand us. Some dogs stare to manipulate owners, as in with begging for food or asking to be let outside. Training and dog sports are good ways to turn focused staring behavior into a positive experience.
Two eyes give us a wider field of view, i.e., approximately 200 degrees with our two eyes. It helps us by reducing parallax error in vision and increases our depth of perception, i.e., the ability to perceive the world in three dimension space.