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- This Is a Triangular Elevator
- 24 Things You Might Not Know About <i>Goodfellas</i>
- Invisible Plane Owners Workshop Manual - Superheroic Transportation Guide
- Score: Bed Banished Bulldog Pup 1, Bednapper Cat 1
- Rocking X-Wing
- M.C. Escher-Inspired Artwork Made From Home Decor
- Woman Learns She's Pregnant, Gives Birth to 10-Pound Baby 1 Hour Later
- Teen Unknowingly Helps Banksy, is Rewarded with Painting Worth $30,000
- The Area in Blue Is Colder Than the Planet Mars
- Dog Abandoned at Train Station with His Suitcase
- THIS is How You Grow a Backbone.
- The One Noteboard EVERYONE Needs In Their Home
- Insect and Arachnid Macros by Nicky Bay
- Mini Zombie Killers - Blood, Bananas, And Donuts
- Photoshopped ID Card Pictures
- Forget Free Community College, Obama! Here's a Better Plan: Bring Back Vocational High Schools
- 15 British Sweets Everyone Should Try
- The Netherlands' Crane Hotels
- Nice Guys Finish First
- Ten Strange Baby Products
- Find the Cat
- Bathe in Knowledge with This Bathtub of Books
- 12 Geeky Doormats To Greet Your Guests
- Monkey Business: Capuchins Learn to Spend Money
| Posted: 10 Jan 2015 04:00 AM PST Redditor felibb writes, "I took a ride in a triangular elevator today." That's fascinating! I've never seen one before. Wherever this elevator is, it's not the only one. Here's a video of another triangular elevator in an airport in Amsterdam. -via BuzzFeed  | ||||||||
| 24 Things You Might Not Know About <i>Goodfellas</i> Posted: 10 Jan 2015 02:00 AM PST The year 2015 means, among other things, that Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas is turning 25 years old. The movie was based on the life of mob informant Henry Hill and his relation to the Lucchese crime family. In this trivia list, you’ll learn how closely the movie followed the actual people portrayed.
And there’s a lot more behind-the-scenes tidbits about Goodfellas in the list at mental_floss, including Henry Hill’s life after the movie, who else was considered for the roles, and a few video clips, too. | ||||||||
| Invisible Plane Owners Workshop Manual - Superheroic Transportation Guide Posted: 10 Jan 2015 12:00 AM PST Invisible Plane Owners Workshop Manual by Gordon Brebner Designs If you're going to own a piece of cutting edge aviation technology the least you can do is maintain the vehicle to the best of your ability, although you'll probably have to locate the vehicle first. This Owners Workshop Manual should help you keep the invisible plane in tip top shape, and when you take it out for a spin you'll see that it's in a league of its own. In fact, none of the aviation catalogs really do this remarkable vehicle justice, and it's a wonder it's not highly sought after by every man and woman with a love of the open skies. Bring some superheroic humor to your geeky wardrobe with this Invisible Plane Owners Workshop Manual, and show the world you're an authority on invisible vehicles! Visit Gordon Brebner Designs's Facebook fan page, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more mighty cool designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||
| Score: Bed Banished Bulldog Pup 1, Bednapper Cat 1 Posted: 10 Jan 2015 12:00 AM PST John Farrier posted the first battle in this bed war two days ago. At the time, Pixel the French bulldog was having little luck getting his cat housemate to see reason on the matter of his bed, but not for lack of valiant effort. Cat appropriated bed, remained firmly in place and was unmoved by puppy persistence. Now, in this second battle, Pixel scores the right to lie in his own bed from the feline overlord. It's those little victories that make the bed seem so luxuriously comfy, Pixel. -Via Tastefully Offensive | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 11:00 PM PST Get your little X-wing fighter pilot started on his flight training with this variation on the classic rocking horse. DeviantArt member Steveswoodentoys made this beautifully-crafted ship. It measures 45 inches long, 47 inches wide, and 25 inches tall. He used pine, macrocarpa, and rimu. It comes with a removable R2 droid. -via Geek Art Gallery | ||||||||
| M.C. Escher-Inspired Artwork Made From Home Decor Posted: 09 Jan 2015 10:00 PM PST Los Angeles-based artist Samara Golden channeled her inner M.C. Escher for this topsy-turvey art installation titled The Flat Side of the Knife, as displayed at MoMA/PS1. For the display, Golden converted a two-story space with common household things like couches, beds, staircases, tables and lamps. The mirrored floor finishes the optical illusion reminiscent of Escher's mind-bending 1953 artwork Relativity. And here's Relativity by M.C. Escher for comparison: | ||||||||
| Woman Learns She's Pregnant, Gives Birth to 10-Pound Baby 1 Hour Later Posted: 09 Jan 2015 09:00 PM PST
Katherine Kropas, 23, is a caterer in Weymouth, Massachussets. She didn't feel well. Her ankles were swollen. Then, a few days later, she felt strong stomach pains. So Kropas called in sick and had her boyfriend drive her to the hospital. Doctors quickly discovered the source of the pain: Kropas was about to have a baby--and a big one! Neal Simpson writes for The Patriot Ledger:
The baby, who is a girl, is healthy. Her name is Ellen Olivia. -via Huffington Post | ||||||||
| Teen Unknowingly Helps Banksy, is Rewarded with Painting Worth $30,000 Posted: 09 Jan 2015 08:00 PM PST
"He opened his rucksack and had a gas mask and spray paints inside. He got out a piece of paper and had colors marked on it of what he had been trying out and he dropped his colors." Azarya helped the stranger pick up his paints. The man asked the teenager if he knew who Robin Banks was. When Azarya replied that he did not, the man handed him the artwork, said that it would be worth around $30,000, and bid him farewell by saying, "Have a good life, brother." Azarya described the notoriously camera shy artist, whose description has heretofore been unknown, as a fortyish, white man with "scruffy clothes" and an old, fluffy hat. Azarya said, "He had a little jacket that didn't go over his arms and jeans with paint on. He looked really wacky and had blonde hair and blue eyes." Azarya and his family have been advised to authenticate the print, and if it's found to be authentic, the teen has plans to sell it. | ||||||||
| The Area in Blue Is Colder Than the Planet Mars Posted: 09 Jan 2015 07:00 PM PST Curiosity is a NASA-operated robotic rover on the surface of Mars. It includes the Rover Environmental Monitoring System (REMS), which measures weather conditions on Mars, including temperature, wind speed, and humidity. If you want up-to-date weather reports from Mars, you can follow the REMS Twitter feed. It informs us that Curiosity has warmer weather than many parts of the United States and Canada. -via TYWKIWDBI | ||||||||
| Dog Abandoned at Train Station with His Suitcase Posted: 09 Jan 2015 06:00 PM PST Tuesday, a picture of dog in Scotland went viral. He had been tied to a railing at Ayr station, and was found with a small suitcase containing his belongings: a food dish, a pillow, a dog toy, and some dog food. The dog, a mixed breed resembling a shar-pei, was taken to the SSPCA. Officials there found a microchip, but the last record said the dog named Kai had been sold on the internet site Gumtree in 2013, but not to whom. Today, the Daily Record identified the woman who left the dog at the station as Fin Rayner. Rayner said she met a man to buy a dog through Gumtree, but the dog was not as advertised and the man fled with a £150 deposit, leaving her with Kai. Rayner does not believe she did anything wrong by leaving the dog at the station. Meanwhile, the SSPCA has received many calls from people who want Kai. -via Fark | ||||||||
| THIS is How You Grow a Backbone. Posted: 09 Jan 2015 05:00 PM PST
In this neat video clip above, Daniele Soroldoni of MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, United Kingdom, showed us a gorgeous glimpse into segmentation - that's fancy biology speak for the division of the body (in this particular case, a vertebrate's body) into a series of repetitive segments like ribs and back bones. Vertebrae segmentation is difficult to see because it happens during embryo development. But thanks to the transparent zebrafish embryo, Dr. Soroldoni managed to capture this pattern formation by using green and red fluorescent proteins. The details, as you can imagine, is quite complicated (Interested? Read on) - but suffice it to say that we all can appreciate the beauty of the process as captured in this wide-field microscopy. Thanks Nicole Hall! | ||||||||
| The One Noteboard EVERYONE Needs In Their Home Posted: 09 Jan 2015 04:00 PM PST The Bat-slap meme is just one of those things that makes me crack up every time. If you're like me, that makes this dry erase board a must-have for your home. Just imagine getting to change the meme every time you think of something new and funny and letting your friends edit the board to write in their thoughts. It even works for your to do list as Batman can threaten to slap you if you fail. It's the perfect home accessory that combines function and style. Via Nerd Approved | ||||||||
| Insect and Arachnid Macros by Nicky Bay Posted: 09 Jan 2015 03:00 PM PST
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| Mini Zombie Killers - Blood, Bananas, And Donuts Posted: 09 Jan 2015 02:00 PM PST When Shaun and his buddy Ed started playing zombie killers the other minions thought nothing of it, but when they started throwing vinyl records at people and clubbing them with cricket bats things started getting despicable. Luckily, Gru and the minions have a high tolerance for tomfoolery, and as long as nobody actually ended up dead they figured they could learn to live with those two freaky little guys pretending to be smack dab in the middle of a zombie apocalypse... Movie mashups don't come much cooler than this Mini Zombie Killers t-shirt by Donnie, slip it on before you head out for a night on the town! Visit Donnie's Facebook fan page and official website, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more ridiculously cool designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 02:00 PM PST The entire purpose of having photo identification cards is to have a record of what someone looks like, so it defeats the purpose to alter them. High school student love_a_good_ood is a senior at an all-girls school. They were issued ID cards with their school picture on them at the beginning of the year. For the second semester, seniors were issued a new card -with pictures that were changed.
You can see an overlay for comparison here. Photographers in the comments commenter said that some school picture companies now do this automatically. But the point of school pictures is to serve as a record of what the student looked like at that age! Removing zits is one thing, but making a student look like someone else is taking it a bit too far, don’t you think? -via Uproxx | ||||||||
| Forget Free Community College, Obama! Here's a Better Plan: Bring Back Vocational High Schools Posted: 09 Jan 2015 01:00 PM PST  Yesterday, President Obama proposed that community college should be free for all American students. "Put simply, what I'd like to do is see the first two years of community college free for everyone who's willing to work for it," Obama said in a video clip posted to Facebook, "That's right. Free for everybody who's willing to work for it." President Obama maintained that higher education is a "the surest ticket" to the middle class. The free community college plan, which the White House estimated would cost the federal government about $60 billion over 10 years, is open to students who'd attend community college at least halftime and maintain good grades. Critics pointed out that the cost is likely to be much higher. If the White House estimates of 9 million students partaking in the program every year and saving $3,800 in annual tuition is correct, the cost would be over $34 billion per year. Congress, which is now controlled by conservative Republicans, is also cool to the idea, with prominent members of the Republican party asking where the money would come from. But politics aside, I think there's a better plan than free community college. Instead, we should bring back vocational high schools. "College isn't for everyone," New York mayor Michael Bloomberg noted in his 2008 State of the City address, "education is." And he might be on to something: Northwestern University professor James E. Rosenbaum argued in his book, "Beyond College for All: Career Paths for the Forgotten Half," that the current educations system fails those who do not go to college and those who start college but do not finish by not adequately teaching practical skills that they'd need for getting jobs. "Our friends in Germany know - as we should - that some students are bored by traditional studies," wrote Northwestern University Professor Harold Sirkin in Business Week, "Some don't have the aptitude for college; some would rather work with their hands; and some are unhappy at home and just need to get away. They realize that everyone won't benefit from college, but they can still be successful and contribute to society." "Americans often see such students as victims," Sirkin added, "Germans see these students as potential assets who might one day shine if they're matched with the right vocation." Indeed, Germany has the system in place exactly for this reason: a dual education system where apprenticeship helps transition young people into full-time employment. POLL: What do you think? Which is the better plan?
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| 15 British Sweets Everyone Should Try Posted: 09 Jan 2015 12:00 PM PST If your'e a fan of candy (or sweets, as the Brits say), you'll want to check out Anglophenia Episode 22, in which Siobhan Thompson discusses and shows examples of fifteen of the most popular British sweets. There's a decidedly different set of tastes between the cultures. For example, Britain seems to have slightly more of a taste for licorice than the United States. What's your favorite type of candy from a country other than that of your origin? -Via Laughing Squid | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 11:00 AM PST
The Netherlands has at least two hotels built into decommissioned industrial cranes. If you want to get a scenic view of a shipyard from the window of a luxurious hotel room, then these are the places to go.
One is the Faralda NDSM Crane Hotel, which has three rotating suites, a TV studio, and the opportunity to go bungee jumping.
There’s even an outdoor jacuzzi, so guests can relax in warm, flowing water while gazing out over Amsterdam. (Photo: Harbourcrane) The other crane hotel is in the port city of Harlingen. The Harbourcrane has only one suite for two people, but that one suite has only the finest of furnishings. The owners spent 2 years refitting the old timber hauler into a romantic getaway.
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| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 10:00 AM PST You’ve heard the phrase “Nice guys finish last” all your life. It turns out the phrase was coined by someone who was looking for an excuse to be not-so-nice. Science says otherwise, as we learn in this video from AsapSCIENCE. Yes, scientists have actually done experiments that translate to this. Wise folks have always known that no matter what your accomplishments are or how much wealth you accumulate, you will ultimately be judged on how you treat others. -via Viral Viral Videos | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 09:00 AM PST Baby products are generally supposed to be more useful than visually appealing to adults, and when we think of baby products three things usually spring to mind- soft, supportive and pastel colored. Products designed to stimulate an infant's senses, to make their little lives comfortable, and to help parents care for their child will become popular among parents, while other products end up becoming the baby butt of a joke. Here are ten bizarre baby products that put the "Wha?!" in watching your child grow up: 1. Baby Snuggie Sweater- There are all kinds of pouch style torso coverings available for parents, and most look comfortable for both parent and child, but this snuggie style monstrosity looks like it's really uncomfortable for your baby. However, if you want to dress your kid up like a chestburster for Halloween this creepy vest getup is a good place to start! 2. Zaky Infant Pillow- It's a good thing most infants can't see a three dimensional view of the world until they're around five months old, because if they could see these horrifying disembodied hands holding them at night they probably wouldn't be able to sleep! 3. Baby Butt Fan- Keeping your infant's bottom dry is important to help prevent diaper rash, but there has to be a better way to achieve this dryness besides holding a fan to your baby's butt until it's dry! It's also unlikely that a baby is going to just lie there waiting patiently while you fan their butt, so something tells me these generally end up being used by mom and dad as a portable fan during those sweltering summer days. 4. The Babykeeper Bathroom Harness- Here's a product that is built upon a parental need- a harness that helps hoist your baby up above the germs and dirtiness of a public restroom. It serves a necessary function, but why would a parent want to carry around an extra harness just so they can strap their baby to the stall wall while they do their business? 5. Baby Durag- EDIT- Durags apparently serve an important purpose, from commentor Jonnette Samantha Huntley Mix: Durags...serve several very important purposes for those with ethnic hair. Since people with very very curly or coarse hair can't wash their hair every day (it damages the hair and scalp), a do-rag is used to cover otherwise unstyled hair (daily grooming can take a loooong time) or to protect a styled head of hair from the elements. In addition, it is used to keep coarse hair, which attracts lint, for example, clean and sanitary. It is also used when the wearer has applied a long-term scalp or hair treatment such as a moisturizing oil. Many beautiful brown babies wear scarves for all these reasons. And do-rags come in a million different colors and styles, not just black. The best use for a do-rag to wear it to bed so that the friction between common cotton bedsheets and the hair doesn't cause breakage and tangles. So this item apparently doesn't belong on the list, but it's too late to take it back now! 6. Baby Mop Onesie- If you're so lazy that you'd rather put your baby to work scrubbing your floors than clean them yourself then it's safe to assume your floors are way too dirty to benefit from a lil rugrat scrub 'n' crawl. And if you put your baby to work in this onesie make sure you don't take any pictures, because your kid may grow up resenting you for making them do household chores at such an early age. 7. Baby Bangs Wig Headband- Baby baldness is a part of infant life, and most parents embrace their baby's baldheadedness and watching in parental wonder as their child's hair grows in over time. However, some people can't wait for their kid to have a curly mane atop their little head, so they choose to skip ahead by using the Baby Bangs wig headband. It's a hairpiece and headband in one, and it will save follicly challenged kids from being the only bald baby at the next baby bash they attend. 8. The Windi Baby Gas Reliever- Gas can be a big problem for babies, and without any relief in sight the child can be left to dwell in stomach curdling misery, but there has to be a better way to relieve gas than with a suppository! From the product description: "The soft, pliable, hollow tube features a rounded tip that is long enough to reach past the muscle that prevents the release of the gas, and also has a stopper to prevent an insertion too far." *shudder* 9. The Nüroo Pocket Babywearing Shirt- This product is similar to the Snuggie vest featured above, but this babywearing shirt is made for mommies who like to look good when they're out on the town with a baby stuffed down their shirt! At least the Nüroo looks comfortable for the baby, but if you're going to eat or drink while wearing this thing do your baby a favor and put a napkin on their head! 10. Thudguard Infant Safety Helmet- There's being a safety conscious parent of a bouncing baby and then there's forcing your poor child to wear a helmet while they crawl around the house, just in case they whack their head. Kids have been getting along just fine for thousands of years without having to wear headgear to protect their noggins, so let your kid be free of helmets until they start riding bikes and such a few years down the line! The baby retail battleground is littered with plush and plastic remnants of products that didn't make the cut, and something tells me these ten products are going to be joining the rest of the failures real soon! | ||||||||
| Posted: 09 Jan 2015 08:00 AM PST Can you find the cat in this living room? Sometimes they don’t want to be found, and sometimes they just want to enjoy us looking stupid while searching for them. Redditor cewallace9 says he spent ten minutes looking before he found him. We don’t expect you to spend that much time, but give it a try. You can enlarge the picture at imgur if necessary, or if you give up you can look at an alternate version of the image for the answer. | ||||||||
| Bathe in Knowledge with This Bathtub of Books Posted: 09 Jan 2015 07:00 AM PST In 2008, Vanessa Mancini exhibited this unique art installation consisting of a sink and bathtub made out of books. Her own footprints cut out of pages mark a path from the tub to the sink. When these photos were taken in 2008, Mancini planned to cover the bathtub in resin so that it could be completely functional. The purpose of installation is to express the purifying experience of learning. Beatrice M. writes:
-via Toxel | ||||||||
| 12 Geeky Doormats To Greet Your Guests Posted: 09 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST Before someone even enters your home, your doormat lets them know a little about you. Are you friendly, efficient, OCD? What about geeky? That's right, now you can express your nerdy self with all kinds of great doormats. Over on Homes and Hues, we rounded up 12 such geektastic rugs to greet your guests with. From fantasy to gaming and from Doctor Who to IT jokes, whatever your favorite geek interest, there's sure to be a great rug out there to make you smile. Check out the full list of nerdy rugs over on Homes and Hues: 12 Wonderfully Geeky Doormats | ||||||||
| Monkey Business: Capuchins Learn to Spend Money Posted: 09 Jan 2015 05:00 AM PST
It’s a little bigger than a quarter and about twice as thick, but because it’s made of aluminum, it weighs roughly the same. It’s flat and smooth, except for what seem to be a few tiny bite marks around the perimeter. To you, it might look like a washer without a hole. To Felix, an alpha male capuchin monkey, and his friends at Yale University, it’s money. “When one of the monkeys grabs a token, he’s going to hold onto it as though he really values it,” explains Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale. “And the other monkeys might try to take it away from him. Just like they would with a piece of food. Just as you might want to do when you see a person flaunting cash.” During the past seven years, Santos and Yale economist Keith Chen have conducted a series of cutting-edge experiments in which Felix and seven other monkeys trade these discs for food much like we toss a $20 bill to a cashier at Taco Bell. And in doing so, these monkeys became the first nonhumans to use, well, money. “It sounds like the setup to a bad joke,” says Chen. “A monkey walks into a room and finds a pile of coins, and he’s got to decide how much he wants to spend on apples, how much on oranges, and how much on pineapples.” But the remarkable thing about the research isn’t that these monkeys have learned to trade objects for food—after all, a schnauzer can be taught to hand over your slippers in exchange for a Milk-Bone. The amazing part, Chen and Santos discovered, is how closely the economic behavior of these capuchins mimics that of human beings in all its glorious irrationality. Viewed in the context of the daisy chain of near-disastrous human failings that brought the world to the verge of fiscal collapse over the past few years, monkeynomics is eye-opening stuff. So how much of our wild, dangerous economic behavior is hard-wired, and how much of it is learned? And most important, how much of it can be changed? Watching Felix and friends make financial decisions—some extremely smart, others profoundly dumb—provides groundbreaking insight into the roots of our own dysfunctional relationship with money. And why it all may have started 35 million years ago. * * * * *
As a Harvard undergraduate, Santos worked with behavioral scientist Marc Hauser and then signed on to do her dissertation based on research in his lab. Her work centered on basic questions of monkey cognition: How high can monkeys count? (To four.) Do they have a good sense of the practical physics of falling objects? (Not especially.) This body of work earned her a tenure-track position at Yale, where in 2003 she was charged with setting up the school’s Comparative Cognition Lab. Santos chose capuchin monkeys for practical reasons. They’re smaller and easier to care for than chimps, but they’re almost as smart, resourceful, and social. She got 10 capuchins from noted researcher Frans de Waal at Emory University and planned to continue with the monkey cognition research that she had started at Harvard. Then one day, one of the caretakers who cleaned the capuchin enclosures in the new lab told Santos that her monkeys were “geniuses.” Felix and friends, he explained with amazement, would hand him their discarded orange peels, trying to trade them for food. Maybe the monkeys were trying to make a point. Around the time that Santos got the lab up and running, Chen was hired at Yale’s business school. Chen had also worked at Hauser’s lab at Harvard, although not directly with Santos. His dissertation included running game theory scenarios with cotton-top tamarins; he designed experiments to see if the monkeys would employ strategic cooperation to get food rewards and found that they were extremely similar to humans in that regard. Chen and Santos met in the fall of 2003 at a New Haven student hangout called Koffee and hit it off immediately, recognizing their common interest in tracing the roots of fundamental human behaviors in other primates. Together, they began brainstorming about what they could do with these “genius” monkeys. They tossed around a host of high-concept ideas, including an elaborate game theory simulation. One of Santos’ grad students constructed a Rube Goldberg–like structure that used stainless steel mechanical arms to divide quantities of food for the classic “ultimatum game,” which measures whether a subject will value fairness over maximal profit. “It was a big, complicated machine with a monkey at one end,” Chen recalls. The idea was ditched after the preposterously strong little capuchins kept casually ripping the machine’s steel arms apart. And then Santos and Chen settled on something simple and elegant—and provocative. “On a lark, we started investigating whether or not we could introduce them to a basic market economy,” Chen recalls. “I’m not even sure we had a good idea of how it would work. But if we could, I knew there were a dozen experiments that people in the economics world would be interested in.” At this point, Chen was already something of a curiosity—the only economist in the world who did research on monkeys. “It’s totally bizarre,” he admits. “But I always worked on what I thought was most interesting.” And what was most interesting was seeing if capuchin monkeys could be taught to spend money. * * * * * So in the spring of 2004, after months of constructing the methodology and training the capuchins in the basics of token trading, Santos and Chen began their work. The Monkey Market was open for business.
Physically, the Monkey Market is a smaller enclosure attached to the capuchins’ larger communal home. It’s where the monkeys go to trade for treats. A video of one of these early experiments shows that when Felix, the group’s alpha male, entered, he received a “wallet” with 12 of those round aluminum tokens. Two student researchers, one wearing a pink T-shirt, the other blue, stood on either side of that 3-foot cubic enclosure, each holding a different tray of food. The premise at this stage was pretty basic: Felix could swap his tokens for food with either of the two researchers. He didn’t seem to care much about the students. But he did care profoundly about what the researchers would sell him in exchange for that little metal token. Felix and the others were cautious, observant shoppers. As the video shows, Felix would head first to the researcher holding out pieces of orange, examining them carefully; before leaving, he stopped to smell them. He went to the other researcher and did exactly the same thing—looking, sniffing, shopping. He then headed back to the first researcher and handed over a token to complete the transaction. Oranges, please.
“The critical aspect of money is that it’s fungible. It represents a choice,” explains Chen. “A coin is fundamentally different than, say, pressing a lever.” Santos and Chen had not only achieved their preliminary goal, they had made history: The monkeys were using cash. The capuchins were now operating in a sphere where humans had been dwelling alone. What next? Although Felix’s intense deliberations were fascinating to watch, they were really beside the point. According to economists, one single factor defines rational behavior in a consumer market: attention to price. Most old-school economics, Chen explains, relies on the bedrock principle that participants in a market will maximize value whenever possible. Could the capuchins become rational consumers? The researchers began messing with the pricing in Monkey Market. The base currency was still one token for one fruit, but the amount of food and how it was delivered would now vary from day to day. Santos’ researchers began presenting the monkeys with two equally appealing options—one would offer a Jell-O cube, the other an apple slice. Then, like Walmart on Black Friday, they would spontaneously slash the price of the apple slices—two slices for a single token! Act now!—while the price of Jell-O remained the same. The monkeys, like any smart bargain hunters, flocked to the lower-priced item. Or, in econ-speak, they reacted to a compensated price shift. “That’s the critical hallmark,” says Chen. “When the cost and benefits change, do my decisions change?” When he examined the data, Chen found, to his delight and relief, that they most certainly did. The capuchins had proven not only to be consumers but also rational ones. Quantitatively and qualitatively, their behavior matched that of humans. And not always in good ways. “One of the things we never saw in the Monkey Market was savings—just like with our own species. They always just spent all their cash at once,” says Santos. “The other thing, amazingly, was spontaneous evidence of larceny. They would rip off the tokens from each other and us at every opportunity.” Clearly the monkeys were screwing up in some of the same ways as people. But how far off track would they go? Santos and Chen decided to think big and introduce some of the same problems into the Monkey Market that have bedeviled centuries of humans. * * * * * Up to that point, the monkeys had been adhering to traditional laws of economics that rely on rational behavior. But a relatively new school of economics called prospect theory, led by maverick Nobel Prize–winning economist Daniel Kahneman, was challenging these tenets, positing that human economic behavior is often irrational. “We never thought this kind of behavior was learned,” says Kahneman, 77, who began developing his theories in the 1970s without having taken so much as a single economics course. “It was always clear to me that it’s biological.” But would the monkeys prove or disprove his paradigm-shifting theory? (Kahneman was aware of Santos and Chen’s research, but didn’t participate in it.) Prospect theory argues that economic decision making is, like Einsteinian physics, relative. The theory contends that humans make economic decisions not in absolute terms, the way a computer might, but relative to some specific reference point—and that causes them to make mistakes. Most of us are risk averse; we’ll do almost anything to avoid a loss. And we treat losses very differently than gains. It’s why investors defy logic by selling off the winners in their portfolio instead of dumping the losers. And why homeowners in a housing slump will let their banks foreclose before they drop the price of their houses. “We were already seeing deliberative decision making in our monkeys that went beyond what scientists had seen in animals before,” Chen explains. “So we just thought, Why not raise the stakes? Why don’t we investigate whether they’ll make the same mistakes that humans make?” Simply put: Were the monkeys smart enough to act dumb?
Armed with cutting-edge economic theory, a handful of tokens, and a bin full of fruit, Santos and Chen introduced the concept of risk to the Monkey Market. In a series of three interrelated experiments designed carefully to mirror economic models, the monkeys chose between risky sellers and safe sellers. The first scenario represented a simple choice for the monkeys: Seller A would consistently deliver one piece of apple; Seller B would sometimes deliver one, and sometimes add one and deliver two. Seller B represented a no-brainer gamble, or what economists call stochastic dominance. And the monkeys immediately grasped the significance of the scenario. They chose Seller B 87 percent of the time. The second experiment presented a bigger challenge: Seller A would show the monkeys only one piece of apple, but add an extra piece half the time. Seller B, on the other hand, would show the monkeys two apple pieces, but half the time would hand one over and take one back. Despite the fact that they were conditioned to trade with Seller B from the first experiment, the monkeys quickly reversed course and showed a strong 71 percent preference for Seller A. The data suggested that the two scenarios felt very different to the monkeys, just as they might to a human. But do the math: Each seller represented a 50/50 chance of ending up with two apple pieces. A computer would value each of the sellers equally. And yet the monkeys greatly preferred dealing with generous Seller A, who sometimes added a piece of apple, than stingy Seller B, who sometimes took an apple away. Fear of loss dictated their thinking. Their decision making wasn’t absolute; it was relative. In the third experiment, the researchers reversed the options, changing from a bonus scenario to a loss scenario. Seller A would show one apple piece and hand it over, while risky Seller B would show two but always take away one and deliver one. Despite the fact that both sellers gave the same payout—one apple piece—the monkeys strongly preferred Seller A. Santos and Chen had hit a home run. When taken together, the results of the second and third experiments suggest that capuchins show an overwhelming loss aversion. Just like us. Chen explains that the data set for the monkeys—which revealed a 2.7 to 1 risk preference in the loss model compared to the bonus model—was completely indistinguishable from what you might find in a trial using human subjects. “It’s a little spooky,” says Venkat Lakshminarayanan, a grad student in the lab. “Sometimes I’d look at the numbers and forget that they’re monkeys,” Chen adds. In the fall of 2008, when the housing bubble burst, and some of the world’s biggest financial institutions went straight to hell, Santos and Chen turned again to the monkeys. There were more tests of prospect theory risk behavior, and more confirmation of the evolutionary underpinnings behind the crazy—and yes, wildly irrational—behavior that led to the current recession. Does this kinship between the capuchins and us have a limit? Chen and Santos seem to have found it. In humans, knowing the price of a costly item makes it more desirable—call it the Château Lafite Effect. Not so for the monkeys. A yet-to-be published study from 2010 showed that, for Felix and friends, raising the price did nothing to boost the appeal of a particular type of food. Finding the end as well of the beginnings of our kinship with the capuchins not only validated the group’s research, it placed a bookend on a groundbreaking body of work. * * * * * So what did Santos and Chen really learn after seven years of intense study? “Whatever mechanism in the brain that’s driving these biases is one and the same in capuchin monkeys and in us,” says Santos. “That means these strategies are 35 million years old.” Moreover, the work with the Monkey Market has helped bolster a growing trend toward viewing economics as a more complex and nuanced science—one in which emotion plays as big a part as cold, hard logic. “The losers are going to fight harder than the potential gainers are,” explains Kahneman. “That asymmetry is really, really strong. It’s why there’s inertia against change. And reducing misery is more important than increasing happiness.” Some economists have begun to create real-world scenarios that take our innate biases into account. Chen cites the Save More Tomorrow program devised by University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler, in which the defaults for a 401(k) plan at a midsize firm were adjusted in accordance with prospect theory to maximize savings. “They’re framing savings not as a loss of income but as a smaller gain,” says Chen. The results were impressive: Employees enrolled in the plan tripled their savings rate from 3.5 percent to 11.6 percent in just two years. And, even as the architect of work that shows how inherently flawed (even stupid) humans are when it comes to all things monetary, the ever-optimistic Santos still sees a positive side. “The problem of modern economics is that it really does assume that we’re homo economicus,” she says. “And we’re not. We make mistakes. So there’s going to be a disconnect when we set up structures that assume we’re going to behave rationally, and we know that we won’t.” She pauses, collecting her thoughts on the couch in her sunny Yale office, which has a “Beware of Monkeys” sign on the wall. “That’s really the message of the work. We’re not doomed. We’re even smarter than the monkeys. We just have to admit that we’re not perfectly rational.” Bonus: Frans de Waal's Capuchin Fairness Experiment _______________________
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How a Yale research team made history by teaching capuchins to spend money ... and discovered that they're just as smart—and stupid—as your financial advisor.
What kind of monkey would Santos be? “A bonobo,” she says with a laugh. “They’re kind of a hippie monkey.” With an infectious smile and curls that cascade down her back, the 35-year-old Santos exudes the cool prof vibe of someone who—all things being equal—would really rather be in a dorm, holding court about the meaning of life. “I’m fascinated by human beings, and monkeys are like humans in their purest form,” she says. She’s quick to offer a funny story about how she decided to pursue primate research after seeing a picture of the lush Caribbean island where the fieldwork was being done. But the truth is that her interest began with the idea that monkeys are like human beings without the cultural baggage.
(Image credit: Laurie Santos)
“When you watch it, it looks like they’re contemplating, thinking about what they’re going to buy,” says Santos. What separates these capuchins from the scores of animals who have been trained to perform complex behaviors in exchange for food is the option presented by that second researcher.
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(Image credit: Laurie Santos)
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The article above, written by Allen St. John, is reprinted with permission from the 
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