Do monkeys understand the concept of money?
Daniel Rodriguez
Published Feb 23, 2026
Do monkeys understand the concept of money?
The capuchin monkeys understood money, not only used it There was stealing too. Not a single monkey saved any of the tokens, but most of them tried to subtract a few more tokens when they were handed out. Grasping the notion of currency simply means you understand that you can exchange money for goods and services.
What did Brosnan and de Waal find in the experiment with the monkeys about fairness?
When Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal carried out just this experiment, in 2003, focussing on female capuchin monkeys, they found that monkeys hate being disadvantaged. A monkey in isolation is happy to eat either a grape or a slice of cucumber.
Can animals understand unfairness?
A number of other primate species, including chimpanzees, rhesus macaques and long-tailed macaques, have been shown to express some form of behavioral responses to inequity. Apart from primates, two further highly social mammalian species, dogs and rats, have also been shown to be sensitive to unfairness.
What happens when two monkeys are unequally?
When 2 monkeys were paid unequally for the same task they revolted against their ‘boss’ Upon completion of a task both monkeys are given cucumber. The researcher, Frans de Waal, says that if both monkeys are given cucumber, “they’re perfectly willing to do this 25 times in a row.”
When were monkeys taught the concept of money?
In 2005, an economist and a psychologist from Yale University taught seven capuchin monkeys how to use money.
Do animals have concept of money?
Animals obviously can’t use currency or sign contracts. And the animal kingdom has no third-party institutions to punish cheaters. Evolution may have produced fish dentists, but it has yet to produce fish lawyers.
Do monkeys understand fairness?
Conclusions. Ultimately, monkeys’ sense of fairness does not seem to be as well-developed as our own, but by studying monkeys’ preferences for fairness, and their responses to unfair situations, we can learn more about how these values evolved in humans.
What type of animal was in the pay equity video about fairness?
The piqued monkey, in a nonhuman-primate sort of way that looks pretty sophisticated, grasps the situation’s unfairness. And it’s not just this capuchin monkey, but others as well, as explained by Sarah Brosnan and de Waal in their article from 2003 called “Monkeys reject unequal pay.”).
Do monkeys get jealous?
But new analysis of jealousy among primates has offered scientists fresh insights into the neurobiology behind the powerful emotion. “Male titi monkeys show jealousy much like humans and will even physically hold their partner back from interacting with a stranger male,” Bales said.
Do any other animals use currency?
If you mean money in the sense of trading something of value to someone else to obtain something that other person has and that person values your offered trade, the answer is yes. In the wild, female chimpanzees have been seen trading sex for meat.
Can dogs understand money?
Once the Cooks realized that their dog understood the value of a dollar, they started giving her an allowance. Holly currently has $87 dollars stashed in various places around the Cook home, and knows how to exchange a dollar for a treat.
Do monkeys have a currency?
A study at Yale–New Haven Hospital trains capuchin monkeys to use silver discs as money in order to study their economic behavior. The discs could be exchanged by the monkeys for various treats.
Do monkeys respond negatively to unequal reward distribution?
Here we demonstrate that a nonhuman primate, the brown capuchin monkey ( Cebus apella ), responds negatively to unequal reward distribution in exchanges with a human experimenter.
Why do monkeys refuse to participate?
Monkeys refused to participate if they witnessed a conspecific obtain a more attractive reward for equal effort, an effect amplified if the partner received such a reward without any effort at all. These reactions support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion.
How does a monkey react to a rock for a treat?
The work, in this case, is giving a rock to a researcher in exchange for a treat. The monkey is perfectly happy trading a rock for a piece of cucumber, until a neighboring monkey gets a delicious grape for performing the same action. The monkey’s reaction speaks for itself.
Do monkeys prefer cucumbers or grapes?
In preliminary studies, two conditions were used: ‘equality’, in which two monkeys exchanged tokens with a human experimenter to receive cucumber, and ‘inequality’, in which one monkey exchanged for cucumber and its partner for grape, a more favoured food.