Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, examined how social models influence memory in great apes. They presented young and adult apes with videos of either a human hand (a social model) or a mechanical claw (a non-social model) building a tower. The results showed that while adult apes remembered towers built by a human hand better than those built by a claw, younger apes did not. To understand the underlying mechanisms, the researchers used AI-based video analysis, developed in collaboration with colleagues from the University of South Australia, to track participants’ heart rates from regular video footage. This technology revealed that the enhanced memory for social events was due to increased attention during social demonstrations. This study is the first to explore social memory development in non-human great apes.