I almost fell out of my chair when I read this one!
Researchers have found that monkeys will 'pay' in juice rewards to see images of female monkey hindquarters or higher ranking celebrity monkeys...just like their fellow primates!
In the above article, published in Current Biology,Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists Robert Deaner, Michael Platt and Amit Khera describe how they performed an experiment with male monkeys in which they gave them juice rewards for gazing either at a neutral computer screen or images of other monkeys.
By varying the juice rewards and the pictures, they were able to find out exactly what the monkeys would 'pay' to see which images in terms of juice rewards.
They found out that the monkeys would accept a lesser reward to watch female monkey hindquarters or images of celebrity, higher ranked monkeys but needed to receive higher juice rewards in order to watch neutral images or images of lower ranked monkeys...kinda like the difference between premium pay-per-view, cable and satellite channels and the bottom of the barrel sitcoms on the local networks.
Moreover, the scientists were able to catalog distinct rankings on monkeys based on their 'ratings' - what their fellow monkeys would pay to see them!
Even more interesting, as Michael Platt Observed, the monkeys were not living in a colony, where physical interaction could contribute to dominance, social standing and sexual relationships.
"So somehow, they're getting this information by observation - by seeing other individuals interact."
AKA peer pressure!
3 comments:
monkey boy, it's one thing to hold whatever it is you have on ff, in order to post your political regurgitations on his website.
it is quite another to make a posting using his name.
you're not fooling anyone chimpy.
we know it's you.
and no one is interested in monkey porn.
Dare I make a comparison to some men who are willing to spend their time watching porn, rather than with family, sometimes risking their relationship with their wife and even their marriage????
No I guess I should not do that.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
Oh, compare away Debbie! There;s some truth in that.
What I found most fascinating about this article is the way it mimicked human entertainment tastes and the way the monkeys responded to groupthink when it came to the status of higher ranking monkeys.
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