Thursday, May 14, 2009

Any Which Way But Lose







I did not mispell "Loose", it was the only monkey movie title I could tie to an news article I read on gambling monkeys. Scientists basically found that monkey behavior in gambling type games is similar to humans. We have known that monkeys respond to rewards and punishments for a long time, any vertebrate pretty much does, but the new study tested the "woulda-coulda-shoulda" reactions that happen when we miss out on a bigger reward, and are forced to settle for less because of our choice and reflect on our sucky fate, which in turn, often dictates our next choice. I don't know what this means for science, and I don't really care, but if monkeys start dressing in silk shirts, wearing sunglasses and smoking cigars with their hairy, little (but powerful) arms around cocktail waitresses, I might start gambling. How funny would it be to see a monkey lose a big hand and start pounding the table and monkey screaming while he upsets everyone else's chips? Or they would get wasted, end up marrying prostitutes and joining the rodeo where they would end up riding around on border collies dressed up as a cowboys (this sentence was only so I could use the greatest picture of all time that I found in my image search for "gambling monkey")?

1 comment:

  1. http://winningbig.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/poker-monkey-262x300.jpg

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