I recently watched a presentation by Dr. Hans de Waal where he demonstrated various animal behavior (his focus was on Monkeys) to get a better idea of their personal characteristics. The presentation was informative and very funny as he showed some great video clips of his experiments. So in this case there’s no way I can make it as entertaining
as Dr. Waal but you should still get some interesting information you can share.
First of all he showed how compassionate they were in that if a monkey gets hurt in a fight or something, other monkey(s) come up and stroke the injured monkey so it will feel
better.
Another very interesting video which showed something I’d never seen before is that a lot of monkeys who get in a fight with another monkey from their same group, reach out to one another after the fight. One video clip looked like the monkey who won reached out to shake the other ones hand.
This particular experiment was one of my favorites. They had two monkeys in separate cages but side by side and each monkey could see the other one. The woman reached in to the first monkey and gave it a cucumber which it quickly ate. Then she gave the other monkey a few grapes (which monkeys love). The first monkey noticed this and when the woman gave him another cucumber he reluctantly ate it. Then he saw her once again give
the other monkey the good stuff (you should have seen its jealous facial expression). The third time she gave the monkey a piece of cucumber he jumped up and down in his cage and threw the cucumber at her. Of course she eventually gave in and gave the first monkey some well deserved grapes. My guess is that he wished he was given the assignment of monkey number two in this experiment!
He then took two monkeys (different ones) and ran a test to see if they were kind enough to share their food. One monkey was taught that if he chose a red block he’d get the entire snack but if he chose a green block, he’d have to share with the monkey next to his cage. As you probably have already guessed he was willing to help feed the other monkey. What
a good friend.
Hopefully I can describe this well enough because it was my favorite experiment. Two monkeys were in the same cage and there were two ropes ends about three feet apart. At the other end of the ropes were two snacks each at one end of a crate. One monkey couldn’t pull the crate by himself so they figured out they could pull together and move the crate towards them. They even figured out they had to pull the ropes at the same time to get the crate moving. It was funny watching them look at each other and time when they would pull. Kind of like us saying: “Okay, one, two, three, pull.” It worked and they both got a
snack.
Then the experiment was changed. They took one monkey out and fed it a good size meal so it was no longer hungry. Then they put this monkey back in the cage with the other one he’d worked with earlier. Keep in mind the incentive to pull together was to get the food so in this case one of the monkeys didn’t care anymore. The monkey who was hungry pushed the
other monkey to the rope and got it to help him. Now after ever difficult pull or two the monkey who was full would try to step away from the rope but the hungry monkey kept grabbing him to help. I can’t describe how funny it was to watch this take place!
The presentation did include showing elephants who demonstrated the same kind of compassion as the monkeys did. They worked together to get food, they consoled each other, and they definitely protected each other especially all of the moms pulling together to protect a baby elephant. Anyhow, the presentation was very enlightening to me.
It’s interesting that many of the traits God wants us to have are being demonstrated by some of the animal kingdom. There own herds, packs, etc., are such good examples of how to have an effective society. So get out there and monkey around!
as Dr. Waal but you should still get some interesting information you can share.
First of all he showed how compassionate they were in that if a monkey gets hurt in a fight or something, other monkey(s) come up and stroke the injured monkey so it will feel
better.
Another very interesting video which showed something I’d never seen before is that a lot of monkeys who get in a fight with another monkey from their same group, reach out to one another after the fight. One video clip looked like the monkey who won reached out to shake the other ones hand.
This particular experiment was one of my favorites. They had two monkeys in separate cages but side by side and each monkey could see the other one. The woman reached in to the first monkey and gave it a cucumber which it quickly ate. Then she gave the other monkey a few grapes (which monkeys love). The first monkey noticed this and when the woman gave him another cucumber he reluctantly ate it. Then he saw her once again give
the other monkey the good stuff (you should have seen its jealous facial expression). The third time she gave the monkey a piece of cucumber he jumped up and down in his cage and threw the cucumber at her. Of course she eventually gave in and gave the first monkey some well deserved grapes. My guess is that he wished he was given the assignment of monkey number two in this experiment!
He then took two monkeys (different ones) and ran a test to see if they were kind enough to share their food. One monkey was taught that if he chose a red block he’d get the entire snack but if he chose a green block, he’d have to share with the monkey next to his cage. As you probably have already guessed he was willing to help feed the other monkey. What
a good friend.
Hopefully I can describe this well enough because it was my favorite experiment. Two monkeys were in the same cage and there were two ropes ends about three feet apart. At the other end of the ropes were two snacks each at one end of a crate. One monkey couldn’t pull the crate by himself so they figured out they could pull together and move the crate towards them. They even figured out they had to pull the ropes at the same time to get the crate moving. It was funny watching them look at each other and time when they would pull. Kind of like us saying: “Okay, one, two, three, pull.” It worked and they both got a
snack.
Then the experiment was changed. They took one monkey out and fed it a good size meal so it was no longer hungry. Then they put this monkey back in the cage with the other one he’d worked with earlier. Keep in mind the incentive to pull together was to get the food so in this case one of the monkeys didn’t care anymore. The monkey who was hungry pushed the
other monkey to the rope and got it to help him. Now after ever difficult pull or two the monkey who was full would try to step away from the rope but the hungry monkey kept grabbing him to help. I can’t describe how funny it was to watch this take place!
The presentation did include showing elephants who demonstrated the same kind of compassion as the monkeys did. They worked together to get food, they consoled each other, and they definitely protected each other especially all of the moms pulling together to protect a baby elephant. Anyhow, the presentation was very enlightening to me.
It’s interesting that many of the traits God wants us to have are being demonstrated by some of the animal kingdom. There own herds, packs, etc., are such good examples of how to have an effective society. So get out there and monkey around!
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