How Monkeys Mirror Human Irrationality

"A monkey economy is as irrational as our human economy. Why do people make irrational decisions in such a predictable way? Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. This video documents a clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too."


http://scientopia.org/blogs/thisscientificlife/2010/08/10/laurie-santos-how-monkeys-mirror-human-irrationality

Summary:

Humans and monkeys both display two traits: A) Relativity and B) Loss Aversion

Relativity was a known. Slippery slopes work in this way. Changes are usually only compared to the immediate past, rather than on the whole.

Loss Aversion seems natural, too. We take bigger risks when losses are involved than we do gains.

A gorilla named Bawang got a chance to play a Nintendo DSi XL when a boy dropped his game machine into the San Francisco Zoo's gorilla enclosure. Bawang's adopted son, Hansai, was hoping for a turn too.

Nintendo appears to have found a new spokesman for their game machines — a giant ape.

No, not THAT ape.

At the San Francisco Zoo Friday, it was a gorilla named Bawang, not Donkey Kong, who could be seen playing Nintendo's latest handheld gaming gadget — the super-sized Nintendo DSi XL.

Photographer Christina Spicuzza was watching the gorillas when a boy dropped his game machine into the gorilla enclosure. A gorilla named Bawang was quick to snatch up the device.

"The gorilla was very interested in trying to figure it out," Spicuzza said, explaining that the ape flipped it over and put it up to her eyes several times.



No video games for you. A San Francisco Zoo gorilla named Bawang refuses to let her adopted baby gorilla Hansai have a turn with the Nintendo DSi XL. A boy dropped his game machine into the gorilla enclosure Friday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38628495/ns/technology_and_science-games/