Re: Intelligence and Fitness Mutuality in Cappucine Monkeys



Passer By sender@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-

JE:-
In experimental situations these monkeys share their spoils. If nuts
become placed in a sealed jar with a covering that could only be
broken by a tool e.g. a flint stone, where one monkey had the stone
and the other the jar of nuts where they remain separated by a
partition with an arm sized hole for communication, the monkey with
the stone tool will pass it to the monkey with the nuts so that it
can bust open the jar. The stone receiving monkey will then pass
back some of the nuts. Cheating was not observed. This behavior is
obviously mutualistic but does not necessarily constitute cognitive
mutualised exchange (commonly referred to as "trade") because
exchange solicitation which requires bargaining were not
observed. After viewing the situation the monkey with the stone
simply passes it to the monkey with the jar of nuts who then passes
some of the nuts back.


It seems like there were plenty of nuts to share in the jar, what if
there were only 1 or 2 or 3? What if the stone would break once used?

JE:-
Both are excellent questions. The experiment described appeared in a David
Attenborough documentary. I would have liked to have measured the mean
number of nuts reciprocated. I would have been interesting to have slowly
reduced the number of nuts in the jar to just 1 to see what proportion gets
passed back.

It seems clear to me that the worth of the stone to the monkey without any
nuts was less than the nuts so if that monkey did not receive any nuts then
the loss to it was not significant. OTOH the worth of the stone to the
monkey with the nuts in a sealed jar was great because it didn't have
anything to open the jar. Can nature select for an implicit agreement that
whenever you obtain help to get food then you must also share it? If not,
why not? If so, how exactly?

IMO the key questions posed here are:

1) Why didn't the monkey with the sealed jar of nuts cheat the monkey who
passed the stone to open the jar?

2) Would it be accurate to suggest that if the recipient monkey did not pass
any of the nuts back then it was behaving "selfishly"? Since it did hand
some over can this action be described as "altruistic"?

3) Is it accurate to say that the passing over of the stone and the passing
back of the nuts constituted "reciprocated" acts of "altruism"?


Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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