[Video] Monkeys In Bali Steal Phones And Glasses To Trade For Food
Learn how monkeys in Bali steal phones and glasses from tourists and trade them for food. Find out what this means for their intelligence and culture.
How Smart Monkeys in Bali Use Stolen Items as Currency
A video that went viral on the internet showed a woman in Bali, Indonesia, trying to get her phone back from a monkey. The monkey had taken her phone and ran away. The woman offered some food to the monkey in exchange for her phone.
This is not the only time that monkeys have done this. A research paper that came out on January 11, 2021, showed that monkeys in Bali have a special way of getting more food from people who visit them.
The research paper was about a group of monkeys that live in a temple called Uluwatu in Bali. These monkeys have learned to steal things that people care about, like phones and glasses. Then they wait for people to give them food in return for their things.
The researchers watched the monkeys and the people for 273 days. They recorded what happened when the monkeys stole something and traded it for food. They found that the monkeys knew which things were more important to people. They asked for more food for those things. They also learned this skill from older monkeys and passed it on to younger monkeys. This has been going on for at least 30 years in this group of monkeys.
The person who wrote the research paper is Dr. Jean-Baptiste Leca. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. He said that this shows that monkeys have cultural intelligence. This means that they can learn from each other and adapt to different situations. He said that this is very rare and amazing to see in animals.
Conclusion
The monkeys in Bali have demonstrated a remarkable ability to learn and adapt to their environment. They have developed a unique form of exchange with tourists, using stolen items as currency. This behavior shows that they have cultural intelligence, which is rare among animals. The researchers who studied them hope to learn more about how they communicate and cooperate with each other.