Fun with Science Club®


			Can you spare a dime? How about a banana? Carrie Striaght 05.03.01 Watching capuchin monkeys shows “thougtfulness” and cooperation. Kimberly Mendres and Frans DeWaal discovered that Capuchin monkeys, Cebus apella (like Ross’s monkey from “Friends”) would help each other get food from a tray that is too heavy for only one monkey to move. Many new science facts are discovered when testing something another scientist has done. In another study, researchers had observed that monkeys did not wait for help before trying to get the food. Mendres and DeWaal wanted to test whether this was true of the monkeys in their lab. They set up 2 cages side by side so that the monkeys in each cage could reach a rod to pull on a tray with food. Only one of the monkeys would be able to reach the food once they pulled on the tray, so the other would have to pull even though he/she would not immediately get the food. They ran two kinds of tests, one in which the monkeys could see one another, and one in which a divider was placed so that the monkeys could not see each other. They showed that the monkeys would pull on the rod most often when their “partner” was visible, helping the other monkey get to the food first.


			Mendres, Kimberly A. and Frans B. M. DeWaal. 2000. Capuchins do cooperate: the advantage of an intuitive task. Animal Behaviour 60: 523-529.