Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk — Transcript

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1. 0:00so final experiment that I want to
2. 0:02mention to you is our fairness study uh
3. 0:05and so this this became a very famous
4. 0:08study and there's now many more because
5. 0:09after we did this about 10 years ago uh
6. 0:12it became very well known and we did
7. 0:14that originally with kuchin monkeys and
8. 0:16I'm going to show you the first
9. 0:17experiment that we did it has now been
10. 0:19done with dogs and with birds and with
11. 0:23chimpanzees um but we s BR and we
12. 0:25started out with kuch and
13. 0:28WKYS so what we did is we put two
14. 0:30capuchin monkeys side by side again
15. 0:32these animals they live in a group they
16. 0:33know each other we take them out of the
17. 0:35group put them in a test chamber and
18. 0:38there's a very simple task that they
19. 0:39need to do and if you give both of them
20. 0:42cucumber for the task the two monkeys
21. 0:45side by side they're perfectly willing
22. 0:46to do this 25 times in a row so cucumber
23. 0:49even though it's really only water in my
24. 0:51opinion but cucumber is perfectly fine
25. 0:54for them now if you give the partner
26. 0:57grapes the food preferences of my
27. 0:59capucha monkeys correspond exactly with
28. 1:01the prices in the supermarket and so if
29. 1:03you give them grapes that's a far better
30. 1:05food uh then you create inequity between
31. 1:08them so that's the experiment we did
32. 1:11recently we videotaped it with new
33. 1:12monkeys who had never done the task
34. 1:14thinking that maybe they would have a
35. 1:15stronger reaction and that turned out to
36. 1:17be right the one on the left is the
37. 1:19monkey who gets cucumber the one on the
38. 1:21right is the one who gets grapes the one
39. 1:23who gets cucumber note that the first
40. 1:25piece of cucumber is perfectly fine the
41. 1:27first piece he eats uh then she sees the
42. 1:30other one getting grape and you will see
43. 1:32what
44. 1:32happens so she gives a rock to us that's
45. 1:35the task and we give her a piece of
46. 1:38cucumber and she eats it the other one
47. 1:40needs to give a rock to
48. 1:41us and that's what she
49. 1:44does and she gets a
50. 1:47grape and she each the other one sees
51. 1:49that she gives a rock to us now gets
52. 1:52again cucumber
53. 1:57[Applause]
54. 2:01[Laughter]
55. 2:06[Applause]
56. 2:07[Laughter]
57. 2:12she tests The Rock now against the wall
58. 2:15she needs to give it to
59. 2:16us and she gets cucumber
60. 2:28again so this is basically the Wall
61. 2:30Street protest that you see here