The relationship between monkeys and videogames go back a long way. While them hairy critters usually starred or otherwise appeared in games, a recent report from CNN shows that monkeys - or at least, their cousins the great apes - are also benefiting from video games.

Researchers at Zoo Atlanta are currently studying the cognitive skills of two Sumatran orangutans by watching them play computer games.

"The more we understand about orangutan's cognitive processes, the more we'll understand about what they need to survive in the wild," said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo. "It enables us to show the public how smart they are."

According to CNN, the orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blends in with their zoo habitat. The games that the orangutans play were designed by volunteers from IBM. The games, which took almost 500 hours to develop, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

Elliott Albers, from the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, said that researchers hope to use the data to learn more about the orangutans' socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behavior from scratch through trial and error. They also hope to use their findings to develop new and more effective conservation strategies to help the 37,000 orangutans living in the wild on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra.