The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

 Monkeys pay per view

Adaptive valuation of social images by Rhesus Macaques
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-01/cp-mpp012705.php

 Public release date: 27-Jan-2005

In a finding that deepens our understanding of animal social 
cognition, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have 
demonstrated for the first time that monkeys, like humans, value 
information according to its social content. People readily pay to 
see powerful or sexually attractive individuals, and, according to 
this new study, monkeys will also "pay" to view these kinds of images.

 While previous studies had shown that monkeys would work to see 
other monkeys, no one knew whether the value they placed on seeing 
other individuals was related to the social relevance of those 
individuals.

 In the new work, researchers Robert Deaner, Amit Khera and Michael 
Platt, all of Duke University Medical Center, tested this hypothesis 
by measuring how much fruit juice monkeys would accept or forgo to 
see photographs of familiar monkeys, permitting the researchers to 
compare monkeys' valuation of different types of social information. 
Male monkeys "paid" in juice to view female hindquarters or 
high-ranking monkeys' faces, but required "overpayment" to view 
low-ranking monkeys' faces. Despite living in a captive colony, the 
value monkeys placed on information about potential sexual partners 
and powerful individuals matched the relative importance of these 
individuals for behavioral success in the wild.

This study demonstrates that monkeys assess visual information by its 
social value and provides the first experimental evidence that they 
spontaneously discriminate between images of others based on the 
social rank or classification of individuals.

 ###

 Robert O. Deaner, Amit V. Khera, and Michael L. Platt: "Monkeys Pay 
Per View: Adaptive Valuation of Social Images by Rhesus Macaques"

 This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health 
and the Cure Autism Now Foundation.

 Published in Current Biology online as an Immediate Early 
Publication on January 27, 2005.  
http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0960982205001041