We’ve blogged before about the many human-like characteristics of primates. New research indicates that in addition to exchanging goods and services, monkeys adjust exchange rates as supply changes. Ronald Noe, a primate ethnologist, measured the grooming behavior of vervet monkeys in southern and eastern Africa. Among these monkeys, grooming is a hot commodity and is viewed by scientists as a form of “payment” for services. Noe found that when the number of food providers increased, each individual food provider received less grooming. (Note: the epilogue of SuperFreakonomics contains a more … uh … dramatic type of exchange between monkeys.) [%comments]
Food for Grooming
TAGS: monkeys
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Hm…
Maybe not as interesting from an economics point of view, but what about the primate-like characteristics of humans ?
What models our behavior, our response to incentives as dictated by evolutionary biology ?
If only: 1) Monkey grooming was transferable and valued by humans and 2) I could become the sole supplier of food for monkeys. If thats not a novel business idea…
It would be interesting to see if monkeys bundle options to be groomed by other monkeys and sell these as a hedge against variability in future banana yields.
Time had an article about how monkeys pay for sex in January 2008. Here is the link
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1700821,00.html
Joe
You made me LOL out loud.
Cyril
Considering the hereditary links, shouldn’t that have been “primate-like behaviour of humans”?
Who are we trying to fool, anyway?
This is only interesting if the marginal or even average cost of the food decreased.
If it was merely a case of payment (i.e. grooming) between split between multiple sellers, without any change is the price (i.e. amount of grooming) there’s nothing intersting going on here. No law of supply & demand. No economic thinking. Nothing.
In fact, the Planet Money podcast you link implies that there IS something interesting going on here — if only by their excitment — but offers no evidence or explanation that there is.