It is now well established that great apes follow human gaze direction. Des
pite physiological evidence showing cells in macaque temporal cortex sensit
ive to direction of eye gaze, there has been little evidence in non-ape spe
cies of similar abilities. The aim of this study was to investigate, at a b
ehavioural level, whether monkeys can use static gaze, head, and body cues
of conspecifics to interpret the direction of attention of others. We recor
ded the looking behaviour of 2 rhesus monkeys elicited by the presentation
of photographs of conspecifics directing their attention in space. With pho
tos of monkey stimuli whose head and body were oriented in different or sim
ilar directions, we found that the head but not the body was used by the mo
nkey subjects to orient their own attention. With photos of monkey faces or
iented to the camera while gaze was averted left, right, up or down, we dem
onstrated that monkeys are able to spontaneously follow gaze of conspecific
s. With photos of monkey heads oriented 45 degrees to the right or left, at
tention following was stronger when the gaze direction was consistent with
the head orientation than when the eyes were directed towards the observer.
Our studies show that both head orientation and eye gaze influence the obs
erver's orienting responses.