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Viewing the local antiquities

 
 
Whores in the news: They say that the best things in life are free 


But.

Scientists have trained capuchin monkeys how to use money, says a new column, Freakonomics, in the New York Times.

And I can't think a lead-in that doesn't telegraph the punchline, so just read on:

Do the capuchins actually understand money? Or is [Yale behavioral economist Keith] Chen simply exploiting their endless appetites to make them perform neat tricks?

Several facts suggest the former. During a recent capuchin experiment that used cucumbers as treats, a research assistant happened to slice the cucumber into discs instead of cubes, as was typical. One capuchin picked up a slice, started to eat it and then ran over to a researcher to see if he could ''buy'' something sweeter with it. To the capuchin, a round slice of cucumber bore enough resemblance to Chen's silver tokens to seem like another piece of currency.

Then there is the stealing. Santos has observed that the monkeys never deliberately save any money, but they do sometimes purloin a token or two during an experiment. All seven monkeys live in a communal main chamber of about 750 cubic feet. For experiments, one capuchin at a time is let into a smaller testing chamber next door. Once, a capuchin in the testing chamber picked up an entire tray of tokens, flung them into the main chamber and then scurried in after them -- a combination jailbreak and bank heist -- which led to a chaotic scene in which the human researchers had to rush into the main chamber and offer food bribes for the tokens, a reinforcement that in effect encouraged more stealing.

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

Beautiful, isn't it? Reminds me of the story Nabokov has his very unreliable narrator, Humbert Humbert, tell: Parisian scientists try to teach a monkey to draw. Finally the monkey picks up the charcoal, and sketches the bars of his cage.

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The pain shoots 
from the top of her head (she touches it) down through left shoulder; soon she's go to the acupuncturist and get cupped again.

A Repetitive Motion Disorder from bobbing her head, no doubt.

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All characters and situations fictional. Copyright (c) 2003-2007 by "John Psmyth."
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