Can monkeys convey ideas?

1991/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Zoologia

We can often guess ideas or humor that someone else may have. Can monkeys have that capacity?

Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney of the University of Pennsylvania have conducted an essay with two different species of macaques.

These researchers introduced several females in different cages, but they could see the area. Next to the cages, sometimes a sweet meal was put on the plate and other times a menacing man was sent, hiding behind a screen). In some of these trials, along with the mothers, young were placed, seeing all that was happening outside the boxes. Some kids just saw sweet food and others just saw a menacing man. The mothers saw everything.

Cheney and Seyfort later pulled the young out of the cages and released them. The offspring showed very different trends according to the trial they had seen before. Some were calm and others were upset. On the contrary, all of them showed similar behavior to that of mothers seeing their children outside.

Since the young were very small, it seems that the mothers had transferred certain ideas to the young and the young were able to pick them up and understand them.