New Yerkes study shows that monkeys will misuse machetes

Yerkes Primate Research Center, a facility known best for its essential work in biomedical and experimental research, has released a new study on primate behavior. The paper, published in Science, Nature, and Tiger Beat, unequivocally concludes that if given machetes, monkeys will misuse them. The eleven-year study was led by researcher and tenured professor Noam Chimpski, who spoke with The Spoke about his inspiration for the project. “It was right after 9/11 that I developed this idea to give machetes to monkeys. There was so much horrible pain and suffering in the world. It shocked me that humans could hurt each other so graphically and I wanted to give the same opportunity to monkeys.” 

But the elegantly simple idea of handing a machete to a monkey was not as straightforward as it sounded. Dr. Chimpski and his lab spent years just getting approval from the Yerkes ethics board. Eventually, the study was green-lit with the compromise that the monkeys would be shown a machete-safety video and restricted from violent video games two weeks prior to the experiment. This was, apparently, the hardest part of the study, because these monkeys loved call of duty. Particularly difficult was weaning Pogo (the dominant male monkey) from Just Dance 2012: Gangnam Style as Psy was the only way to keep him calm.

The study found that when researchers released a group of monkeys into a room filled with machetes, it was only two minutes before pandemonium occurred. The shiny blade made for an intriguing find, but it was also new, and therefore scary. Almost all monkeys approached the blades, four swung them in manners not detailed in the machete-safety video, and two used the weapons to hold a research assistant hostage, only releasing her for one bag of peanuts and a vintage playboy magazine. The control group, monkeys that were not given machetes, in contrast, picked their noses and just kind of sat around. 

Dr Chimpski concludes that overall, monkeys do not use machetes in a responsible manner, even with proper training, and future researchers working with monkeys are advised not to give them machetes. When asked about his further plans with this research, Dr. Chimpsky told us that he is very excited for his newest study in the works, ‘Will Monkeys Misuse Guns?’