Chimps choose more rationally than humans

The Burning Taper is known across the Milky Way for its never-ending coverage of monkey business. If it's about a primate, we'll print it.

Our masthead should be "By monkeys. About monkeys. For monkeys."

(Read more RAW.)

In the past we've brought you cutting-edge monkey business including:

• Peaceful, sex-loving chimps being eaten to extinction
• Chimps making monkeys out of humans?
• Planet of the Crazy Apes
• Evolution, schmevolution! We're all apes inside
• Princeton University shows how to hack an electronic voting machine
• Do Masonic monkeys hold banana-split fundraisers?
• And of course, Burning Taper's 500th post, where I admitted I am, in fact, a semi-literate simian.

Now we learn that chimps are more rational than humans.

Chimpanzees make choices that protect their self-interest more consistently than do humans.

Researchers used a two-player economic game where each player, either chimp or human, receives something of value and can then share it with the other player.

If what is offered is rejected, then neither player gets anything.

Humans typically offer half of the booty, and typically reject any offer significantly less than half, even though rejecting it means neither player will get anything.

Chimps, though, will offer much less than 50%, but will accept any offer.

What's this mean? Researches think it means that humans will go without to punish another person, or to keep him from getting more than his "fair share."

Chimps don't care about being fair. They simply protect their self-interest, and they are unwilling to lose something simply to punish someone else who is being unfair.

Chimps, like most "lower" animals, live in the Now, and are concerned with their immediate present, unlike humans, who constantly live in the past or the future, worrying excessively about other people, both in their attempts to be fair to them, and to punish those who they perceive as unfair.

(Read more Tolle.)

Monkey Business | Chimpanzee Studies | Rationality | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Chimps making monkeys out of humans?

Long-time readers of The Burning Taper may have noticed I have a soft spot for articles about monkeys and chimpanzees. I don't know why. Maybe it's because they're our closest brothers, just a chromosome away from forming their own Grand Lodge.

Previous ape articles or photos:

• Peaceful, sex-loving chimps being eaten to extinction
• Planet of the Crazy Apes
• Evolution, schmevolution! We're all apes inside
• Princeton University shows how to hack an electronic voting machine
• Do Masonic monkeys hold banana-split fundraisers?
• And of course, Burning Taper's 500th post, where I admitted I am, in fact, a semi-literate simian.

Today's monkey business is about Hiasi (pronounced HEE-sui), a 26-year old chimp. He and his lady Rosi have been living a life of luxury at an animal sanctuary in Vienna, Austria. They have spent most of their lives feeding their faces with croissants, watching reruns of B.J. and the Bear, painting a little as the Muse strikes them, and dressing up occasionally for a night at the opera.

Unfortunately, Hiasi doesn't have a job, and the free room and board he's been getting for the past quarter century is about to end. The animal sanctuary he and Rosi call home has gone bankrupt. They just couldn't afford the chimps' $6,800 a month lifestyle.

Animal rights activists have come up with a plan. They have established a foundation to raise funds for and care for the chimps, who are expected to live to the age of 60.

But under Austrian law, only a person can accept personal donations.

The activists have begun paperwork to have Hiasi and Rosi declared "persons" who will have certain legal rights.

"We're not talking about the right to vote here," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.

"We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions."

All well and good. I like chimps.

But those of you who've studied future history by watching the sequels to Planet of the Apes will recognize the potential danger here. Beware! Those little critters may be smarter than we think. This could be the beginning of the Ape Revolution!

Where's Charlton Heston when we need him?

Chimpanzees | Chimps | Monkeys | Freemasonry | Grand Lodge of Monkeys | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Do Masonic monkeys hold banana-split fundraisers?

About this time last year, we posted an entry about chimpanzees who fornicate instead of fight to resolve squabbles and who live for the most part very happy lives, except they're being eaten to extinction.

In what may well become an annual spring tradition — a post about chimps — I point you to a recent story about chimpanzee culture that says chimps often greet each other with "Masonic style handshakes."

I wonder if their secret password is Ba-Na-Na?

Masons | Chimpanzees | Nature | Freemasonry | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com