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Study Shows Monkeys Like Watching TV
According to a Japanese study, monkeys are not immune to the siren call of the idiot box. It seems rhesus monkeys enjoy watching videos of circus animals. From the article: "The study found that when the monkey was witnessing the acrobatic performances of circus animals on a television screen, the frontal lobe area of its brain became vigorously active. The activity in such an area was significant in reflecting the monkey's pleasure, as the human equivalent is a neurological area associated with triggering delight in a baby when it sees the smile of its mother."
Hundreds of millions of monkeys are watching other monkeys chasing a ball on TV. And deriving pleasure from it presumably.
I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it -- Groucho Marx
Have you seen what's on TV these days?
Knowing our similarities to other primate species, I think they should direct and film some "TV drama" type performance of monkeys -- basically, a TV show that uses monkeys doing the kinds of social interaction monkeys do. Then, see if the monkeys are just as interested in watching other monkeys handle situations, as we are in watching humans.
Also, see if they're able to distinguish TV from reality, and if they start feeling strongly about the characters.
Of course, it could be difficult to get the monkey "actors" to cooperate.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
That's "siren song," you illiterate clod.
film everything they see, will one of them eventually create "Planet of the Apes"?
Just asking...
Strap a monkey to a board, stick some electrodes in its brain, then measure how happy it is. Show it some moving images, which distract it from the fact that it's strapped to a board with electrodes stuck in its brain. It gets less unhappy. NOBEL PRIZE!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A) To find and parallels between the physiological make-up of monkeys and humans.
B) To better understand Monkey behavior.
Not everything studied needs an immediate reason. sometimes the knowledge is it's own reward, and very often other people come along look at that data and then find a practicable use for it. Much of what Einstein did was worthless at the time. His work on the concepts that you could stimulate electromagnetic emission. It wasn't until much later that the LASER was actually built.
Until studied whether or not they would read to television was only speculation.
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Study Shows Scientists Like Watching Monkeys Watching TV
There was a short lived TV show on TBS featuring chimps running a TV network. It was appropriately named The Chimp Channel and was actually pretty good if you like that kind of thing.
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