It was a pleasant evening, the weather was cloudy and the rain drizzled with the potential of a heavy shower. We were enjoying our cups of tea/coffee when we spotted a parrot which flew in on an adjacent tree and graciously perched on a branch. It shook itself to get rid of the water from her rain drenched body. We started admiring its tropical green feathers and its cherry red beak. We were specifically discussing on why the parrot’s beak was red. We exchanged some silly thoughts and stupid ideas. The course of the discussion gradually turned scientific and we realized that we brought Mister Charles Darwin in the middle of the conversation for no fault of his, and about the Natural Selection that he propagated, which I hope he doesn’t regret.
The conversation turned exciting and interestingly worse when I found myself participating in the discussion that included Ribo Nucleic Acid (RNA) and Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA). Since I don’t want to get stoned by the visitors of this blog, I am going to skip the details of our discussion. And so the discussion took a round trip and we soon found ourselves talking about how the younger generations are more intelligent than their older counterparts. This is where I would like to bring to light a certain thing which I hope gets your interest. While having this discussion, I mentioned a story about a certain Monkey experiment that I had read somewhere. But apparently, I told them a wrong version.
This story, of an experiment, was related to the propagation of intelligence within a group of species, especially form the older to younger generation. Here is how the exact version of the story unfolds:
The Japanese monkeys, Macaca Fuscata, are found aplenty on the several islands of Japan. During 1952 and 1953 the primatologists began "provisioning" the troops of monkeys on these islands - providing them with such foods as sweet potatoes and wheat. The food was left in open areas, often on beaches. As a result of this new economy, the monkeys developed several innovative forms of behavior. One of these was invented in 1953 by an 18-month-old female that the observers named "Imo." Imo was a member of the troop on Koshima island. She discovered that sand and grit could be removed from the sweet potatoes by washing them in a stream or in the ocean. Imo's playmates and her mother learned this trick from Imo, and it soon spread to other members of the troop. Unlike most food customs, this innovation was learned by older monkeys from younger ones. The potato-washing habit spread gradually up until 1958. But in the fall on 1958 a remarkable and amazing event occurred on Koshima. This event formed the basis of the "Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon."
In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes — the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes.Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes. By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!
A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea. Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes!
The story concludes that when a certain critical number or say critical mass or critical threshold, achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind. This is also referred to as group consciousness.
The essence of this experiment, a lesson, is about how a social change is brought about when the monkeys were provisioned. They suffered changes in their attitude and their value system and brought about a cultural change in their behavior.
Coming back to Coffee Break Talk, I could relate this to smaller kids who seem extremely intelligent, in a way that they could operate a given piece of equipment without being given specific instructions. I have seen my cousins off springs aged 4 to 7, operating my laptop, firing up the IE and playing online games. One other nephew who is about 6 knows how to get to the gaming sites from Google and which site has which particular game.
Today I was at the ATM, and this kid aged about 2, accompanied by his mother was standing on the wooden stool and was staring at the screen of a neighboring out-of-order machine. As I observed, he punched a few keys on the machine and was saying “Money come, money come”. He waited and when nothing came out, he punched some more keys and said again “Money come, money come”. His mother was trying to convince him that machine was out-of-order and that no money was going to come out, when the author of this post, yes, that’s me, made a smart move and punched keys on my machine and out came the cash. The kid observed me taking the cash and refused to let go of the ATM machine, adding to his mothers misery.
The monkey story in fact is interesting, in a way that it throws a lot of light in the behavioral aspects and propagation of paradigm shifts. In case you would like to read further, here are the links:
0 comments:
Post a Comment