Monkeys Pay for Monkey Porn

An anonymous reader writes "Give a monkey some spending money, and he'll blow it on pictures of women monkeys. He'll also pay to see dominant monkeys. But you'll have to pay him to look at inferior monkeys. That's the upshot of a study out of Duke that was designed to explore the 'social machinery of the brain with an eye toward helping autism patients.' Next up -- seriously -- the researchers want to run the same test on Joe Sixpack (sans the monkey business)."

Comments

Evolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put an infinite amount of monkeys in a room with a bunch of Internet terminals, do they eventually come up with a new business model for online pr0n?

So, HOW can monkeys tell who is dominant

[Anonymous Coward]

In a very un-Slashdot-like manner, I have actually read the article (It was on Fark.com before Slashdot picked it up). I find the following part interesting:

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.

"So, somehow, they are getting this information by observation -- by seeing other individuals interact," said Michael Platt of the Duke University Medical Center.

So, the question is: How are the monkeys able to see who is dominant and who is not?

It would be too much to expect...

[kid-noodle]

That we'd get anything other than a stream of 'spank the monkey' jokes, I suppose.
I mean, I'll grant you that they're easy... But for all that the circumstances of the study make for plenty of nice crass jokes, it does raise some very interesting questions - hands up who else thought watching sports, and porn, were singularly human proclivities?

Apart from the mild fascination attatched to what this tells us about our extra-fuzzy relatives, it gives an interesting perspective on what it is to be human, how divorced are we from our fellow animals? From those things we like to refer to as 'animal instincts'?

But, since it's all too easy.. I'll let you construct a joke based on dominant monkeys, and American politics, as an exercise for the reader.

And what do female monkeys pay for?

[Redshift]

... and what do they have to be paid to do?

Bestiality

[britneys 9th husband]

Ok, silly question...

If a male monkey gets off on looking at pictures of naked (human) women, is that considered bestiality?

Re:Bestiality

[DwarfGoanna]

Actually, Roger Fout's book Next Of Kin, about the Washoe Project talks about the chimps raised in human families being sexually attracted to humans. One in particular, an adult female, was known for flipping through Playgirl magazines while flicking her clitoris with a pencil.

I kid you not.

Re:Ig Noble Prize Material

[johnlcallaway]

I must disagree. I have read several books that attempt to show coorelation between primate behavior and many human behaviors. These studies are important in the nature/nurture arguments and important in learning how to treat social and mental disorders.

Besides, anything that strengthens the argument that watching p0rn is natural gets my vote for futher funding.

That's what TFA says

[characters42]

That's what TFA's headline says: Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms.

It would be interesting to know if they really only tried it with a male watcher / female picture combination. If so that would give an interesting insight into the researcher's minds...

Another question then would arise: were the researchers male or female...

Re:Ig Noble Prize Material

[Dogtanian]

Besides, anything that strengthens the argument that watching p0rn is natural gets my vote for futher funding.

Were these monkeys deprived of normal monkey contact, including the opportunity to see other (real) monkeys, possibly indulging in sexual activity?

If so (and I suspect they weren't living in the jungle, so the answer is probably yes), then all this may prove is that watching pr0n (*) is natural IF YOU SHUT YOURSELF AWAY FROM CONTACT WITH OTHER HUMANS.

And the monkeys didn't have a choice I'll bet; unlike most humans.

(*) Dammit! It's "pr0n", not "p0rn". Learn to spell!

Would female monkeys pay

[greylion3]

- to see dominant male monkeys?
- to get bananas?
- to get dildos?
- to see monkey pr0n?

Missing the point: A cure is not needed

[Johnny Fusion]

From the article: "One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don't find it very motivating to look at other individuals," Platt said.

This is an attitude of what those comfortable with Autism call a "curebie". I am the parent of a wonderful boy who happens to have autsim, and I can tell you, he is no need of a "cure".

Autism is categorized as a system-wide neurological disorder. A "disorder" because the system of an autistic individual deviates from what is considered "normal". These are most likely inherited traits. To "cure" autism would pretty much be a system of eugenics. Once born with these traits, there is no cure. Just as there would be no cure for left-handedness or red hair. This is not an acquired disease, this is who these people are.

Not being comfortable with looking at someone in the face is not the end of the world. I hope to teach my son coping mechanisms to live in a world that does not make sense to him, there is no need for him to pretend to not be autistic and fit in with the Neurotypical folk.

As cool as it is that monkeys like porn as much as the average slashdotter, this research in my opinion is misguided.

Re:Missing the point: A cure is not needed

[Dunbal]

This is an attitude of what those comfortable with Autism call a "curebie".

No, it's the attitude of a scientist doing his research, so that maybe one day we can say a little bit more than "autism is a neurological disorder". I assure you that these researchers have no intention of "curing" your son.

I have worked 5 years with adults who had various degrees of autism so I am familiar with the disorder.

this research in my opinion is misguided.

You are entitled to your opinion of course. I once submitted a research proposal to study the brains of live humans in order to find out a little more about how they work. All I needed was a small biopsy from each individual, about 10% of the brain mass. They called my proposal misguided too. I also never managed to get any volounteers. So I guess the only means we have to explore our own brains is by doing "misguided research" like this, studying other species and especially primates, in different situations, and hoping like hell that our comparisons have the least bit of significance when applied to a human situation.

It's kind of like back when we weren't allowed to dissect human bodies, and everyone was going on about how the human body inside was just like a pig's anyway (which is completely untrue). So we probably never truly know how the brain works and how it doesn't, since what we have to work with are cadavers and lesser (?) species.

Re:Missing the point: A cure is not needed

[Ganryu]

I'd have to strongly disagree with you here, while i'm no expert myself I do associate with a group of Psychology Masters, two who actually specialise in autistic children. They are strong believers that their is infact a "cure", cured in the sense that when these children grow up, they are virtually indistinguishable from other people and no longer exhibit the traits that would classify them autistic and be able to function in society as normal people.

The problems with socialising with people commonly associated with such things as lack of eye contact and inability to verbalise their wants (like banging their head with a toy hammer until they get attention instead of asking) is one of the major problems psychologists deal with through positive reinforcement (giving them something they like/want when they act in a way deemed socially acceptable, or atleast better than they were doing.

It's so amazing to see kids who just a 3 or 4 years ago seemed like they would never be able to function in society coming up and talking to you and asking for a drink themselves. I'm talking from an Australian stand point here and am not sure what services are provided by the Government in the US, but truly the work these people do is so impressive and should be giving so much more resources than they currently are.

Re:Humans already do this

[MrByte420]

I'm a gay man who likes to watch sports and found the joke to be rather whimsical.

Whats halrious is that Queen, headed by the flamboyantly gay Freddy Mercury, wrote lots of the songs that you hear at football games e.g. "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions..."

Autism is an acquired disease

[Anonymous Coward]

This pro-aspie attitude is no different from the pro-ana and pro-deafness mess.

People with disorders and disabilities, in some attempt of self validation, try to say their disability is not a disability but just 'different'. If a person is retarded - which is what autism is by definition - trying to pretend that they're not retarded, but just 'different', is a messed up attitude. They're tying people's worth to their physical (dis)abilities rather than how good they are as a person, and as they're doing this, they try to pretend that their personal disability isn't a disability but is just 'different' to try to self validate. We see anorexics doing this, blind people doing this, deaf people, some schizophrenics, and now autistics.

Autism is not 'different' like blue and green eyes are different. It is massive brain damage caused by chronic, global physical illness. These individuals may be disinterested in focusing on others because certain parts of their brains have been literally destroyed or are not working. They often have mental illnesses because they have some of the most radical chemical inbalances in their bodies that you'll find in anyone.

2/3rds of children with autism are not 'born' with autism, but develop normally for the first two to four years. Autism is not inherited. But rather, genetic traits are inherited that make a person more or less vulnerable to the environmental insults that cause autism. Autism is a modern disease that was very rare before recent times. This is because few people were exposed to the things that cause autism until now.

Autism can and has been induced in previously normal adults and lab animals, as well as children.

Oh, and autism can potentially be cured. Parents are now having success in curing autism with bio chemical intervention. Children have gone from quasi vegetative states to being completely normal and communicative.

I am opinionated about this subject because I used to be autistic. Note past tense.

Re:Autism is an acquired disease

[forkazoo]

I am not diagnosed autistic, but I have always had some behavioral quirks consistent with mild autism, or something similar, and frankly, I have always found the few truly autistic people I have met to be much easier to get along with than mundanes.

So, obviously, there is a very broad range of what autism is from real, diagnosed mild autism, to not-quite-but-sort-of like myself, all the way to the profound autism where people are unable to function.

There is no right answer to whether it should be cured. If somebody is completely unable to function, and to speak for himself, then his guardian should probably consider getting him available treatments. For me, personally, If somebody came to me with a pill that could make me function better in society, and understand people better, and be more normal, I wouldn't take it. I would fight kicking and screaming before anybody forced a normal-pill down my throat. I am curious about what normalcy would be like, but the fact that my brain doesn't work like anybody else that I know tends to be a valuable thing in many cases.

For the middle ground, I think it has to be up to them. Research should continue. Treatments should be available. But, normalcy should not be mandatory.

Re:Autism is an acquired disease

[bungo]

They're tying people's worth to their physical (dis)abilities rather than how good they are as a person, and as they're doing this, they try to pretend that their personal disability isn't a disability but is just 'different' to try to self validate. We see anorexics doing this, blind people doing this, deaf people, ...

This is very true, and Im ashamed to admit that I had no idea that this occured until recently.

There was a documentary on the BBC which followed some deaf people, one couple were having a baby. The maternal grandmother was deaf, and the paternal grandmother was not deaf. Both parents were deaf.

When the baby was determined to be profoundly deaf, the reaction of the paternal grandmother was "Oh, I'm so sorry", while the reaction of the deaf maternal grandmother was "I'm so happy for you". Both of the parents were very happy and were wanting their child to be deaf.

They were rationalizing it as that now their child would be living in a special world of deaf people, and would have all of the same wonderful experiences as they, deaf people, have. If their child was able to hear, then they would have been disappointed that their child would live in a different 'world' to them.

I was totally amazed at this attitude, and when I told my wife about the show, she was shocked and couldn't understand their perspective (and I probably didn't do a good job of explaining the entire show to her as well). We're just so glad that our son is perfect and is not limited by any loss of any of the senses.

Re:Humans already do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say that it's Christianity that's at fault. Not that my knowledge is deep in breadth or whatever, but if you read Chaucer (14th century), who was a very devout Christian, male physical contact was pretty normal in his stories.

Male physical contact was okay until the 1950's or so (Asimov writes about men taking other men by the hand, etc.), when suddenly there was some sort of... hyper-masculinization, I'm not sure how better to describe it. And even so, it's found chiefly in North American society, to boot.

In conclusion? No idea where it comes from, but even with Christianity's idiosyncrasies, it can't possibly be the only explanation.

Re:Humans already do this

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I just happened to have read "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. Of course he was an englishman writing in 1860, and he describes his very hetero male characters holding hands and getting emotional over each other. This was in a very christian, very protestant culture. Its not christianity, folks, that leads to homophobia!