anhinga_anhinga | Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls

Something seems ~~wrong~~ strange with this.

from http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/108552

The differences apparently date far back in evolutionary history to the time before humans and monkeys separated from their common ancestor some 25 million years ago, according to Gerianne Alexander, a psychologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who led the experiment.

"Human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," Richard Haier, a neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine, wrote in the journal NeuroImage.

Variety of toys used

In the monkey experiment, researchers put a variety of toys in front of 44 male and 44 female vervets, a breed of small African monkeys, and measured the amount of time they spent with each object.

Like little boys, some male monkeys moved a toy car along the ground. Like little girls, female monkeys closely inspected a doll's bottom. Males also played with balls while females fancied cooking pots. Both were equally interested in neutral objects such as a picture book and a stuffed dog.

People used to think that boys and girls played differently because of the way they were brought up. Now scientists such as Alexander say a creature's genetic inheritance also plays an important role.

"Vervet monkeys, like human beings, show sex differences in toy preferences," Alexander wrote in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. "Sex-related object preference appeared early in human evolution," she said.

Alexander speculated that females of both species prefer dolls because evolution programmed them to care for infants. Males may have evolved toy preferences that involve throwing and moving, skills useful for hunting and finding a mate.

What seems ~~wrong~~ strange is how the statement that female monkeys fancied cooking pots might fit into this evolutionary speculation... hmmm... hmmm...

Upd: probably this was because the cooking pots were red, and the authors of the paper decided to spin their conclusions somewhat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not here, I think:

Alexander, G. M., & Hines, M. (2002). Sex differences in responses to children's toys in a non-human primate (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23., 467-479.

BTW, you might have electronic access to it, if your library subscribes to this journal.

Yep, sure does! I am sending it to you by e-mail! Enjoy, and kiss the monkeys for me :-))

thank you, thank you :-) I'll tell you what it says :-)

it - the monkey?? :-))

The 2 monkeys of the Homo Sapiens species who wrote it...

So the journalist presented it (the article) fairly, the details are correct, except on pp.8-9 the authors admit, that the reason might be color (red for the cooking pot/pan), nevertheless they do not try to separate these factors before proceeding to their conclusions, and mostly ignore the color thing in the conclusion (because the results would be less sexy?). So the paper might be defective (or not), but is the presented fairly. The cute monkeys are on page 7.

The whole sensation in this case disappeared entirely after reading the original paper. If it took us...hmmm.... at most an hour to find and read the paper, why, oh, why we can't have journalists who can do the same??? Sigh....

It would also be nice if journal reviewers would do a better job (it was wrong to publish the original paper in this form).

P.S. E-mailing the lj comments is less than perfect again...

Yeah, except there is this stupid assumption that a review should take 3 hours, or so. I am reviewing a paper now, I spent an hour on it already, and didn't even get to their main results! And you think anyone will appreciate my time at the end?

E-mailing the lj comments is less than perfect again... - yes, I had a misfortune to notice it already.

;-) The analysis of how much the current process of peer review sucks would make a lot of juicy stories for the mainstream press ;-)

Don't start me on that one.
I am going to get some work done instead. Heh!

And now they are also posted in duplicate again...

Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls

Re: Eurika! :-)

your library subscribes to this journal

Re: your library subscribes to this journal

naively

Re: naively

Re: naively

Re: naively

reviewers would do a better job

Re: reviewers would do a better job

Re: reviewers would do a better job

Re: reviewers would do a better job