Coconuts pits elephants against cats, and cats against mice, and mice against elephants – all while the marmosets sit on the sidelines and mind their own business. To set up the game, four "victory" cards are laid out on the table, each with a color-coded "coconut" on top. The deck of cards – which contains nine each of elephant, cat and mouse, along with three marmosets – is shuffled and placed in front of the dealer, a position that rotates each round. In a round, the dealer deals three cards face-down to different players (except when only two are in the game). Players reveal these cards simultaneously, then they must quickly determine which animal is victorious among those revealed – elephant, cat, mouse, "no winner" – and grab the correct coconut. If a player does so, he claims the cards revealed; if he goofs, he receives a penalty point. Collect three of these, and you're booted out of the jungle. When the deck runs out, the game ends. Players score three points for each marmoset collected, one point for each other animal and negative one point for each penalty. High score wins. The game includes two variants: In one, six "disguise" cards are mixed into the deck, and when a disguise is turned up, then for that round all cats are instead mice (or elephants are cats, etc.) In the second variant, the disguise cards are used along with defense cards, such as an elephant depicted with cheese; in this case, the cheese distracts the mice, so the mice will lose to elephants. Four cards are revealed each round instead of three.