Me and my Monkey(s)

Hey guys, this is Elliot, Yale class of Jonathan Edwards 2011. I kinda suck at the "all about me" type intro, so I'll spare you. I do, however, like to think I'm actually pretty entertaining, so I'll let the updates here give you a glimpse into what my time at Yale has been like.

Considering how many times I've switched my major by now, the midpoint of my sophomore year, picking classes is always a challenge. But this semester, I found one of the most awesome classes in the psychology department-- I get to play with 11 of my very own monkey friends in PSYC 371: Laboratory in Animal Cognition.



The lab, working under Professor Laurie Santos, does behavioral studies of the brown-tufted capuchin. There's a ton of projects going throughout the day, ranging from monkey's cognitive capacities to be generous, how they play economic trading games, and whether they can recognize and respond to music. The monkeys themselves are all named after heroes and villains from the James Bonds films. Auric Goldfinger used to be our alpha male, but since he's been aging Felix Leiter has now taken over the top spot. James Bond himself, though, is definitely the most clever of them all. (I should know, he's stolen things from me enough times to prove it.) Meet some of the monkeys on the official CapLab site!

My study, Eyes, is trying to extend some really cool findings from previous studies in humans to capuchins. We use a set-up called the monkey dictator game, where the capuchin gets to choose between two planks, both of which deliver food to the decider and another monkey in an adjacent area, to measure how prosocial a capuchin may behave. Its been found that capuchins are willing to preferentially deliver the better prize (marshmallow rather than celery) to the adjacent monkey even though other species (like the chimpanzee, who is otherwise considered our most closely related and cognitively advanced primate relative) do not.


These studies have been well replicated, so mine comes with a twist. It's been found that the image of eyes will make humans more generous in donating money (a lot of charities have figured this out, so that's why you see so many faces looking directly at you in their brochures) so now we're doing a new monkey dictator game with the inclusion of capuchin eyes watching.

But even beyond participating in this cutting edge cognitive research, the monkeys are just plain fun. The capuchins like basically all the same snacks I do: grapes, peanuts, Fruit Loops, Cheez-its, marshmallows, and the supreme snack of them all, the “fluff taco”, sandwiching peanuts together with marshmallow goo. I fed them a whole squash recently, watching them all squabble over the prize as they all tried different ways to break it open before somebody finally threw it from the top of their enclosure, splitting it in half. A lot of nom nom nom ensued.

And as I much as I love the capuchins we have here in the lab, I'm considering doing some research at two of our other sites over spring break, either the Cayo Santiago Field Station working with macaques, or studying lemurs at the Lemur Conservation Foundation Myakka City Reserve. Something I've understood basically since I was four years old: nothing is cooler than monkeys.