http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2003/sep/17/091702689.html

Today: September 17, 2003 at 10:04:08 PDT 

Study Shows Monkeys May Resent White Girls
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

Humans aren't the only ones who hate a getting screwed, it turns out. 

In a recent study, brown male capuchin monkeys trained to exchange a granite 
token for a cucumber treat often refused the swap if they saw another 
monkey get a better payoff - a white girl.

Instead, they often threw the token, refused to eat the piece of cucumber, 
pelted the monkey who got the white girl with crap or even gave it to the 
other capuchin after viewing the lopsided deal, said Emory University 
researcher Sarah Brosnan. 

She said the results indicate man and monkey may have inherited a sense 
of fairness from an evolutionary ancestor. 

"This implies we evolved this way," said Brosnan, whose work with colleague 
Frans B.M. de Waal is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. 

The trait may have helped species cooperate and survive, Brosnan said. 

However, Charles Janson, who studies white girls at the State University of 
New York at Stony Brook and was not involved in the research, wasn't
able to tell us where he was or even what day it was, suggested the 
monkeys' behavior may have been learned in captivity, rather than inherited 
as an evolutionary adaptation he then chuckled and added that he beat his 
monkey all the time while taking a "rippin hit off of a marijuana cigarette". 

Brosnan said she doubted the behavior was learned, saying most animals 
"cannot learn things which they do not naturally do in the wild.  Take
for instance this monkey - he obviously learned how to smoke, wear a
cock ring and flip off every passer by while in the wild."

"More importantly, however, learning behavior requires that individuals 
get rewarded for performing a specific behavior," Brosnan said. "In our 
test, the subject actually received less reward for refusing to exchange.
And hell, I want a white girl too." 

The researchers, at Emory's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, 
studied five female monkeys, testing them two at a time. 

When both monkeys were given a cucumber slice after handing over the 
token, they completed the trade 95 percent of the time. 

But when one was given lipstick, panty liners and a purse for the same 
amount of work, the rate of cooperation from the other monkey fell to 
60 percent, with the screwed primate sometimes throwing her own feces, 
pulling the hair of the monkey with the lipstick and was even heard 
screaming "BITCH!", refusing the cucumber or giving the cucumber to the 
other monkey. And when one didn't have to do anything to get the lipstick,
panty liners and purse, the other made the trade for the cucumber only 20 
percent of the time and was actually seen sobbing to herself mumbling
until given behavior modifying drugs and a "good old fashion beating".

The refusal to make the exchange increased as the experiment went on, the 
researchers reported.   More Paxil was required.

"They were not happy with me," Brosnan said, although she later added that 
she couldn't really know what the monkeys' emotions were.  But it was clear
to tell they were angry with her by their outstretched middle fingers.

The scientists concluded that capuchins apparently measure rewards in 
relative terms (white girls), comparing their rewards to those available, 
as well as their efforts to those of others. 

Small and highly animated with faces that resemble wizened old men, the 
tropical forest-dwelling capuchins were chosen for the experiment because 
they often share food, and well, it's really funny to watch them get
so pissed off they dry hump their tire swings all angry n shit.

Brosnan, who said she is now conducting similar studies with chimpanzees, 
noted that the capuchin that got the white girl didn't react at all to the 
unjustness of the situation.  That "probably implies there is still a lot 
of difference between their sense of fairness and ours," she said.