Monkeys Want Justice
In an experiment conducted with caged capuchin monkeys a few years ago, scientists found that the sense of unfair treatment was not only unique to humans. Researchers conducted a series of trials in which pairs of monkeys were given tokens and were then encouraged to swap them in exchange for food.
The scientists observed that the monkeys were glad to exchange their tokens for cucumbers. Next, taking into account that the monkeys preferred grapes to cucumbers, one monkey was given grapes and the other was given a cucumber. After initial trials, it was observed that the monkey receiving the cucumber was less than happy to see her partner receive grapes in exchange for the taken (females were used as it was determined that males cared less about inequality and quality of the food). On some occasions, the monkey receiving the cucumber would refuse to give up the token. Other times, the monkey taking the cucumber would refuse to eat it or would toss it out of the cage entirely!
These results show that the monkeys were definitely paying attention to each other’s benefits. A significant change in a monkey’s behavior occurred when the other monkey undeservingly received food of higher quality. As any human would react to unfair treatment, the monkeys became frustrated and their behavior deviated from the norm. This irrational behavior (occurring despite the presence of a reward) is observed in humans and capuchin monkeys alike.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C3167-BADB-1F68-905980A84189EEDF
Posted by Mayur Patel (3)
posted by PWH @ 10:29 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Very neat article. Its interesting that the female monkeys exhibited this behavior more so than the male monkeys, I would have thought that any gender would feel an inequality subjected upon them. I guess it just shows that monkeys are behaviorally more like us than some think.
Posted by Doug Zelisko (3)
Nice post. I guess this is very interesting. Usually we are all under the assumption that animals will eat anything that we give them as food. I wonder what leads them to behave in such way and why do only females do it.
Posted by Bruno Karam (3)
Very interesting article. I am not surprised at all with this behavior since monkeys are closely related to humans. It would be helpful if you could if you would indicate the species of monkey that did this and how closely biologically they are related to humans. Also why the females did this and not the males.
Posted by Balkrishna Gantyala(3)
Interesting topic, its funny to read about jealous monkeys. I find it kind of weird that the male monkeys didnt care as much as the females did. I would have figured that the male monkeys would possess more of a reaction due to dominance. Its also funny to see how the monkeys gained a somewhat feeling of worth. For example they started to not give the experimenter the token when it was only recieveing a cucumber.
Posted by Francis Rogers
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