Monkeys are one of the most interesting animals out there that needs to be observed and studied. What makes them even more interesting is that and as Charles Darwin mentioned in his theory of evolution, we might have gradually evolved from apes, for ,we have several features in common. Monkeys are extremely clever, if you ever visited India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka you would know how clever these animal are. If you found yourself in one of those previous countries you’d know what is it like to live under a very harsh, organized and ruthless regime, they are some sort of a group of mafia spreading terror everywhere, monkeys these would steal your stuff until you give them food, they would destroy your car, play with your kids, you would actually have a target on your back if you are carrying food with you.
What’s catches the eyes here is that these monkeys represent some sort of a Behavioral biology and even philosophical questions such as; are these animals weary of their behavior? and do they have morality ?
1. Chimpanzees and their moral codes.
There was a study conducted in Switzerland by a group of scientists on chimpanzees to determine how chimpanzees would react to violence. This study aims to determine whether chimpanzees have a sense of right or wrong or not, therefore, 17 chimpanzees were closely observed while watching a film of chimpanzees engaging in a violent and aggressive behavior. What happened is that they spent four times longer looking at a footage where chimpanzees brutally attacking and killing one of their own own children which is interpreted as a wrong behavior and against their moral codes.
2. The token experiment.
In this experiment monkeys were asked to give their human testers a token in exchange they get a reward, they give them a treat some of them received a piece of cucumber while other received a grape, the grape being the much tastier treat to brown capuchin monkeys and they also let them see each other and what their neighbors were getting as a treat for their token exchange. When the cucumber monkeys saw that their neighbors were getting grapes they became less willing to engage in the game, in some cases they were furious and outraged and flung their change tokens away in frustration. This shows that monkeys dislikes unfairness, interestingly a later experiment showed that female monkeys were far more sensitive to unfairness than male ones.
Scientist are still trying to figure out why monkeys behave like that toward unfairness, it could be that they are more or less like humans and that they are guided as well by social emotions that’s why the nest you are dealing with monkeys you have to be more careful and weary not to do something wrong because if they dislike unfairness in situations like this imagine how their payback would be especially if you are out there in the wilderness.