There is nothing they enjoy more than sitting in front of the TV, watching celebrities at play and images of well-formed female bottoms. Human males, of course, are keen on it, too. Scientists reported last week that male rhesus monkeys will 'pay' to check out pictures of female monkey bottoms or images of socially dominant members of their species.
Account Options
Associated Data
The bonobo is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face, tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. The species is omnivorous and inhabits primary and secondary forests , including seasonally inundated swamp forests. Because of political instability in the region and the timidity of bonobos, there has been relatively little field work done observing the species in its natural habitat. Along with the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. Bonobos live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river. There are no concrete data on population numbers, but the estimate is between 29, and 50, individuals. The species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and is threatened by habitat destruction and human population growth and movement, though commercial poaching is the most prominent threat.
Introduction
This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Published online 1 February Nature doi Michael Hopkin. To a monkey, some things are worth looking at more than others. A US study has shown that rhesus macaques will pay to look at images of powerful or sexually interesting fellows. The discovery, made by neurobiologists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, supports the theory that monkeys will make sacrifices to gain socially useful information, much as a human might spend money on a newspaper. Male monkeys will 'pay' in fruit juice to look at a picture of a socially dominant monkey or a female's hindquarters.
Animals exhibit different degrees of preference toward various visual stimuli. In addition, it has been shown that strongly preferred stimuli can often act as a reward. The aim of the present study was to determine what features determine the strength of the preference for visual stimuli in order to examine neural mechanisms of preference judgment. Four macaque monkeys performed a simple choice task, in which two stimuli selected randomly from among the 50 stimuli were simultaneously presented on a monitor and monkeys were required to choose either stimulus by eye movements. We considered that the monkeys preferred the chosen stimulus if it continued to look at the stimulus for an additional 6 s and calculated a choice ratio for each stimulus. Each monkey exhibited a different choice ratio for each of the original 50 stimuli.
