New Scientist
Image: tullis
Monkeys might not deal in stocks and shares, but they do trade commodities, and now it seems that monkey exchange rates are influenced by supply and demand.
Grooming acts as a common currency among non-human primates, saysRonald Noë at the University of Strasbourg, France. It is exchanged for food, greater tolerance from dominant members of the group – and even for sex.
To see how the exchange system works, Noë’s team created an artificial market in groups of vervet monkeys by introducing a plastic box filled with food that only one subordinate female was trained to open.
An hour after the female opened the box, the biologists noted that she was rewarded by being groomed more often and for longer by other group members, and that she could afford to groom dominant group members less often. Read more on newscientist.com…
