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The Primate Police
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience reports on research indicating that certain monkeys act like cops in a group. When they removed the enforcers, the monkey society fell apart. The rest of the monkeys quickly formed cliques with friends and family and interaction between the groups ceased. More interesting is how the monkeys 'vote' for their law enforcement officials, by baring their teeth to show deference. From the article: 'When an individual receives these voting signals from most of the group, it shows he is well respected--or feared--and he becomes the new sheriff in town.'"
Finally Fox can combine some of their best programming: Cops and When Animals Attack!
My other sig is funny.
just more proof that we're related to our simian cousins -- even in our society, certain monkeys decide to become cops.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Didn't Dr. Jane Goodall figure this out twenty-five years ago?
Bill Monkey: Who's the owner of this canopy? ...
Monkey Dubois: I, I am. I bought the place for 12 bananas in '79 and
[Will throws feces at him]
Little Bill Daggett: You, sir, are a smearing son of a bitch! You just roadappled an unarmed man!
Bill Monkey: He should have armed himself if he was goin' to decorate his tree with my friend.
Little Bill Daggett: You'd be Will Monkey out of Missouri; smearer and fecal slinger of innocent women and children.
Bill Monkey: I'm Will Monkey and I've shat on most everything that walks or crawls; and now I'm here to brown you Little Bill for what you done to Ned.
Little Bill Daggett: [walking toward Will] All right boys, he's only got one handful left. When he throws, cowpie this son of a bitch down.
My work here is dung.
I for one welcome our new monkey overlords.
*bars teeth*
After RTFA, it seems pretty clear that the "researchers" failed to establish proper control guidelines and jumped to the nearest conclusion that supported their hypothesis.
Based on the skimpy article, I submit an alternate hypothesis: that the submissive monkeys became fearful when [unseen?] overlords came in and "removed" their elected officials. This caused them to form small protection groups. The article also does not document how long this behavior continued.
Consider the following experiment: Start a small farming town somewhere in the middle of the US. One night, "remove" all of the town's elected officials. Observe that the citizens form small groups and hide in their homes. I don't see how this differs much from the "research" they did on these monkeys.
how is that a troll mods? Tryin to be funny sheesh!
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
Well, I guess this proves that there may not be a "state of nature" in the old philosophical sense. We naturally organize ourselves. Katrina was one of my examples, when people naturally formed hierarchical groups for survival and promotion of order. The question now is, do we recognize that there is a compelling argument now to question the extent and nature of government, since if evolution be true, it is organized more out of a primal fear than an enlightened attitude toward social interaction?
It certainly does help prove a point on why governments have often be so brutal toward their own people.
Dude, RTFA.
/me prepares to dodge oncoming feces
It clearly explains that in simian socieities, monkeys enjoy acting like police.
Just last night, I cited the Nature article in question in an assignment regarding poorly-written scientific papers (focusing on the quality of writing itself, not the quality of the research).
This is the abstract of the article in question:
Citation, if you're interested: Flack, J. C.; Girven, M.;de Waal, F. B. M.; Krakauer, D. C. Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates. Nature. 2006, 439, 426-429.
*sigh* So we're monkeys. At least we don't throw excrement at each other. Mostly.
Behold the riant ape! Beware, his crooked thumbs!
"Watch out for Sherriff Bonobo and his Deputy Rhesus. They are deadly shots with their poo!"
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Just look at the example our fearless leader, pres. duhbya and co have set... /me runs and ducks for cover from inbound feces...
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
that abstract seemed really clear to me. It seemed intelligent and well structured, and summarized the reasarch methodology and findings in an easy-to-understand way. What about the writing do you note as being weak or poorly done?
You'll see the same kind of behaviour with dogs at a dog park. If two dogs get into a fight, other dogs often try to 'break it up'. The peacemakers aren't necessarily the alphas either -- more often they're the betas.
I think it has something to do with an innate instinct to protect the pack, sort of like: "don't hurt each other -- we're a pack and we need everybody, and besides, there are no veterinarians out here." Well not really, but you know what I mean.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I understand bonobos have more appealing methods of conflict resolution, maybe assisted by not having attained a population density where STDs became a selection factor.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
sumary: without domination and coercion, individuals go and do thier own thing.
Sounds like a rationale for the Stalinism.
Given this, the question is "do the monkey police have a vice squad?"
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.