A photo from open sources
Two scientists from Yale University (Connecticut, USA) decided introduce commodity-money relations into the monkey environment. results surprised them themselves. Monkeys started to progress with amazing speed and literally before our eyes, “turn” into people, mastering our behaviors and vices.
“Wacky” experiment of two friends
Two friends from Yale University Keith Chen and Lori Santos once in a conversation raised the topic of the role of money in development human society. Both agreed that it was the appearance of money as an intermediate link in the chain of work-life benefits has become the impetus for the emergence and development of civilization, and not labor at all. To test their theory, they decided to conduct an experiment on monkeys.
If they were zoologists, they would never have taken such a step. The idea in the eyes of professionals looked frankly stupid. TO fortunately, one of the friends was a psychologist, the other an economist, and both did not know anything about the experiences of their predecessors.
Who does not work shall not eat
For their experience, they took capuchin monkeys. Worst choice it was simply impossible to do. Already in the process of experiment friends learned that capuchins are considered among the trainers the most stupid of primates. But friends did not lose heart, but decided to continue the experiment, even with “idiots.”
A photo from open sources
First things first, they decided to train the monkeys to work. In the aviary a lever was set, by clicking on which the monkey received a banana, grapes or chocolate bar. This stage did not cause difficulties, animals quickly caught the link lever-treat. Do you want a banana – sod once by the lever, you want two bananas – pull two times, and the third banana the monkey was not needed, she was already full.
Money
And here the experimenters took a revolutionary step: instead of They began to issue goods to the Capuchins “salary” – tin tokens. The guys were very worried whether the monkeys would guess that plastic are cards the same banana, the same apple, the same chocolate bar? Monkeys guessed. And right before our eyes they began to “humanize”, acquiring all the human aspirations and vices.
Among them appeared “workaholics” who exhausted themselves with overwhelming labor, yanking the lever to exhaustion. They in turn divided into “spender” and “skopidoma.” The first made a “feast mountain “, immediately eating” earned “, the second were content small and carefully kept the accumulated capital.
“Lazy people” appeared who did not want to burden themselves with physical loads and dragging out “miserable existence” (in the sense of consumption delicacies).
Next, the experimenters introduced large and small “bills”: tokens became multi-colored. Over white you could get a brush of grapes, for red – two, and for green – three. In a few days the monkeys clearly orientated how much it costs and is noisy expressed their indignation if they were trying to “count”.
Everything is like people
Soon, among the monkeys, traits of character began to appear, earlier they uncharacteristic: greed, cruelty, envy, suspicion.
Monkey society was divided into “prosperous” and “Holodtrans”. “Fists” tried to keep a separate heap and away from goofy.
A photo from open sources
When a number of monkeys passed into the category of “oligarchs”, appeared “thieves” who did not want to “work”, but tried to steal the coveted tokens. Moreover, the criminals also understood the “denominations” and they didn’t take what was simply bad, but the most expensive tokens.
“Robbers” appeared who did not disdain the open weaning of “money”, while using physical violence. Because of the tokens started fights.
A normal human life has gone.
Counterfeiter, teddy bear and prostitute
For the sake of fun, one monkey was given a cut out circle of cucumber, in shape and size close to the token: what will she do with it? Kapucin did not “buy it,” realized that it was a cucumber. First upset, but Then I tried to “get it”. Among the capuchins appeared the first “counterfeiter”.
One monkey managed to escape from the aviary and tried “grobanut bank” – to crack the box standing in the laboratory, in which friends kept tokens. And the friends came in complete delight when the first prostitute appeared among the monkeys: one female after the “act love “demanded” compensation “. Having received the required,” night butterfly “hastened to the supermarket and” bought “to” earned ” grapes.
Prostitution turned out to be a truly ancient profession.
Away from sin
The experiment lasted several months. Satisfied friends decided that they had enough materials for a doctoral dissertation and terminated it. However, evil tongues claimed that the experimenters were banally scared. Too fast monkeys evolved. Say Kit and Lori decided to interrupt experiment until he got out of hand. “Planet of the Apes” watched? That’s it.
Posted by Klim Podkova
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