Monkeys and salary caps

The first thing that you must know is that to a capuchin monkey a grape is much more valuable than a cucumber. It will work (perform a task) for the price of a cucumber but given the choice it would prefer working for a grape. Grapes, in capuchin monkey world, are more valuable than cucumber – a higher salary so to speak. So what do you think would happen if you had two capuchin monkeys in adjacent cages and you started off by rewarding each of them a morsel of cucumber when they performed the same task? Well, so long as you did so they would each happily perform and consume.

Frans de Waal – a Dutch primatologist and ethologist – set up just such an experiment. For the next step though he decided to reward the monkeys unequally. While one monkey received a “promotion” in salary terms (a grape) the other was given a cucumber once again for the very same task. The moment the “underpaid” monkey noticed that it had received a salary of lesser quality for performing the same task it went berserk (see video).

This experiment goes toward demonstrating that even in the animal world there is a sense of justice and equality. In the words of Frans de Waal the angry monkey came up with his equivalent of “the Wall Street” protests – complete with angry rattling of cage and throwing of unwanted foodstuff. What I do not know is whether de Waal went on to experiment rewarding monkeys differently for different tasks and whether a capuchin monkey would still get angry if the other monkey being paid a better salary was performing a more difficult task.

The monkeys seem to get it though. Same task requires same pay. It’s only fair. Would they appreciate the fact that a technical job in which a monkey is specialised and successful merits a better salary and reward? In the human world the system of salaries generally observes that kind of rule and barring communist and socialist systems the more successful and capable you are or the more specialised your service the more is your salary reward. Unless of course, as I said, you are brought up with the chip-on-the-shoulder socialist mentality and the only solution you can see is the wielding of the all-equalling socialist scythe : equal pay for everyone no matter their competence. A sort of il-paga tagħna lkoll.

You only get monkeys if you pay peanuts and even the monkeys are learning fast that peanuts are not always the best pay around.

Check out The paradox of fairness on The New Statesman