Mon(k)ey Talks

Posted at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

dawkinswatch / cc

Sharp-eyed PETA intern Elijah spotted a couple of recent news stories that show (once again) how much we have in common with our primate cousins—monkeys, in this case.

First came word that cotton-top tamarin monkeys can "acquire an affixation rule that shares important properties with our inflectional morphology." Gotta love scientific jargon, huh? Put a bit more simply, they can recognize when a word doesn't have the suffix or prefix they expect to hear. So if you're striking up a conversation with a monkey, watch your language because you're not the only one who knows what "caging" and "killing" means.

Then we learned that rhesus monkeys use the same mechanism—"configural perception" (well, natch)—as humans do to recognize faces. Turns out that monkeys also experience the "Thatcher Effect," which, yes, is named after the former British prime minister. If you don't know what the Thatcher Effect is—I didn't—here's more about it. (If you don't know who Margaret Thatcher is, I can't help you.)

So let's see. Monkeys can recognize Margaret Thatcher upside down. They know prefixes and suffixes, can speak in sentences (and with accents), and can even do math. Heck, they have a stronger skill set than some people I've worked with—although not at PETA, of course. But they're definitely overqualified to be caged and tortured in laboratories at Columbia University or Covance. What really blows my mind is how experimenters can discover all of this and still torture and kill monkeys. Maybe we should be conducting tests on experimenters' empathy instead.

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Comments

Gorillas, bonobos, monkeys, chimps and other apes are the class of the primate kingdom. In general, Humans are the pariahs and demons of the primate kingdom.

Posted by: Brien Comerford | July 16, 2009 07:54 PM

I live in Puerto Rico and here an agreement was passed the in the south part of the island there will a place were they will hold captive many monkey and sell them for animal experiments. I'm so against this and I want to know if there is something we could do.

Posted by: Nancy | July 17, 2009 02:26 PM

I just don't know why Peta hasn't done some petition campaigning against this new facility that they plan to build to breed monkeys in Puerto Rico

Posted by: Margarita | July 18, 2009 11:33 PM

@ Margarita: We are definitely campaigning against it. Check out our action alert about it: https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2259.

Posted by: Shawna Flavell | July 20, 2009 04:58 PM