21 June 2010

Monkey Monday | Male Macaques Will Pay To See Female Monkey Butts

Image: Science Daily | Van Den Dikkenberg
A ... study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say. The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates.

The scientists actually had to pay [the monkeys], in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys. Curiously, the monkeys in the test hadn't had any direct physical contact with the monkeys in the photos, so they didn't have personal experience with who was hot and who was not.
More at Live Science

No comments: