Monkey Learning Money

Monkey Experiment That Learning to Spend Money…

In an experiment in which economist Keith Chen and psychologist Laurie Santos at Yale University taught Capuchin monkeys to use money, it was seen once again that environmental conditions push monkeys to behave like humans, and how indispensable sexuality is.

Chen stated that the reason why Capuchin monkeys were chosen as the experiment was that these monkeys are among the most selfish animals in the world, and in his statement, “Capuchines have a life focused on food and sex. Even if you give them a nap from morning to night, they will come to you for more after they vomit.” he said.

Chen gave the capuchin monkeys round discs of silver with a hole in the middle to use as money. It took Chen 7 months for the monkeys to learn to use these discs to buy things.

Eventually, the monkeys learned to buy things like jelly beans, grapes and apples with these hollow coins. In fact, the monkeys, who liked the jelly beans more, even started to buy less of the grapes in order to get more jelly beans. They kind of learned to be thrifty and manage a budget.

Realizing that money is so valuable, these monkeys even attempted to steal to get extra money during the distribution of money.

The most interesting part of the subject was witnessing two male monkeys giving the discs distributed to them to female capuchins in exchange for sex. After sex, female capuchins rushed to buy grapes with the money they earned.

Few questions to ask to do a thought experiment with some fiction:

• What happens if the female monkeys of these monkeys learning to spend money are given less money than the male monkeys?
• What would happen if there was only one female monkey among the males in the experiment?
• What happens if one of the monkeys in the experiment is male and the others are female?
• What happens if the number of male and female monkeys were equal in the experiment?
• Why didn’t all the male monkeys spend money on prostitution?
• Why didn’t all the female monkeys commit prostitution?
• If female monkeys are not paid at all, will they all commit prostitution?
• Do male monkeys become gigolos if they weren’t paid any money?

You can share your thoughts on the monkey experiment that learning to spend money in the comments section…

January 7, 2024