Moral behavior in animals

    Hello, everyone! Today, I'll talk about an interesting experiment about animal behavior. 

    Do you think that animals understand the concept of fairness? If you want to know whether they are knowing it or not, what will you do? I will write one answer about it, but of course it is not only one answer, so if you have any interesting ideas, please tell me on comments!

    First, examinees are two capuchin monkeys, and they are divided into two rooms which have transparent walls. Thus, they can look each other every time. At the rooms, two capuchin monkeys should do an easy task: they should give a rock which are handed in them to a researcher who are standing in front of the two rooms. If one capuchin monkey complete a task, it will get a chip of cucumber. On the other hand, if the other capuchin monkey do the same task, it will get grapes. 

    The monkeys prefer grapes to cucumber, so they are under unfairness situation.

    As a result, a capuchin monkey which get a chip of cucumber got angry, and it throwed the chip of cucumber to the researcher! Thus, researchers found that animals also understand the concept of fairness. 

    Thank you for reading! 

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Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals | TED Talk