Monkey suits

If you do a Google search on "Chen monkey sex Yale food economics money" god I hope my blog doesn't come up. You might, however, stumble on this fascinating article (the first new column by the authors of Freakonomics, great book I'm currently reading before bed) in the Times Magazine about a Yale researcher (named Keith Chen) who is conducting an experiment teaching capuchin monkeys about the concept of money. The results are pretty shocking and hilarious.

During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

Another fascinating tidbit: the monkeys (like us) love sugar. The original reward/treat he used were marshmallows. And the currency they trained the monkeys to use was a disc with a hole in the middle ("like Chinese money").

During a recent capuchin experiment that used cucumbers as treats, a research assistant happened to slice the cucumber into discs instead of cubes, as was typical. One capuchin picked up a slice, started to eat it and then ran over to a researcher to see if he could ''buy'' something sweeter with it. To the capuchin, a round slice of cucumber bore enough resemblance to Chen's silver tokens to seem like another piece of currency.

Kind of gives new meaning to the word "sugar daddy" don't it?