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What Monkeys Can Teach You About Money

Un long article (en anglais) démontrant que la bêtise humaine est animale. Ou plutôt les risques économiques. Prenez des singes, donnez leur la valeur de l’argent puis vendez leur des fruits… avec des risques sur les résultats de la vente…

What Monkeys Can Teach You About Money
August 25, 2011 – 12:00 AMThis is a special sneak peek at the September-October issue of mental_floss magazine. Click here to get a risk-free issue!

by Allen St. John

How a Yale research team made history by teaching capuchins to spend money … and discovered that they’re just as smart—and stupid—as your financial advisor.

It’s a little bigger than a quarter and about twice as thick, but because it’s made of aluminum, it weighs roughly the same. It’s flat and smooth, except for what seem to be a few tiny bite marks around the perimeter. To you, it might look like a washer without a hole. To Felix, an alpha male capuchin monkey, and his friends at Yale University, it’s money.

“When one of the monkeys grabs a token, he’s going to hold onto it as though he really values it,” explains Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale. “And the other monkeys might try to take it away from him. Just like they would with a piece of food. Just as you might want to do when you see a person flaunting cash.”

During the past seven years, Santos and Yale economist Keith Chen have conducted a series of cutting-edge experiments in which Felix and seven other monkeys trade these discs for food much like we toss a $20 bill to a cashier at Taco Bell. And in doing so, these monkeys became the first nonhumans to use, well, money.

What Monkeys Can Teach You About Money