Meanwhile, in Indonesia: Monkeys learn to break the rules, get free stuff, and repeat

Monkey Cultcha
So, in an astonishing scientific breakthrough, researches have found that monkeys who steal from tourists have now learned to sell the belongings back in exchange for food. This cycle is now spreading through other monkey populations. They now apparently congregate around tourist hotspots and engage in this behavior instead of foraging naturally for food.

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a primatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, and her colleagues set out to discover how and why it has spread through the monkey population.....Brotcorne wanted to determine whether it was indeed cultural, which could help us better understand the monkey’s cognitive abilities, and even human evolution.

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supporting the idea that they were learning the behaviour by watching each other. Groups with more young males, who are more prone to risky behaviour, also had higher rates than other groups.

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It is particularly interesting, he adds, because the same behaviour isn’t seen in other places where it could occur. “This indicates that it can indeed be a new behavioural tradition in primates and one that teaches us that new traditions can involve robbing and bartering with a different species,” he says.

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No word yet on whether obesity and sexually transmitted diseases have also begun to run rampant in this monkey population.