Oh Jezze, these are such sad little monkeys ... it makes me think of that quite horrible psychological experiment that they did in the 50's or perhaps early 60's where they separated little baby monkeys from their mothers. They then provided the baby monkeys with two substitute mothers - the one was made of wire, but it had a kind of teat attached to it so the monkey could get milk, and the other one was the same size, but with no teat, and was dressed in a soft cuddly fabric. Most of the monkeys preferred the soft version mother, even if they did not get milk from it. They spent most of their time trying to cuddle up to the soft mother and even when they went over to the wire-mother to get milk when the hunger got too bad, they tried to hold on to the cloth mother. Just typing this makes me cry. I saw pictures of these tiny little baby monkeys. The experiment was used to prove that mammals, including homo sapiens, have emotional needs and that only providing nutrition and keeping them healthy is not enough. But I think I could have told them that without the experiment.
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Oh Jezze, these are such sad little monkeys ... it makes me think of that quite horrible psychological experiment that they did in the 50's or perhaps early 60's where they separated little baby monkeys from their mothers. They then provided the baby monkeys with two substitute mothers - the one was made of wire, but it had a kind of teat attached to it so the monkey could get milk, and the other one was the same size, but with no teat, and was dressed in a soft cuddly fabric. Most of the monkeys preferred the soft version mother, even if they did not get milk from it. They spent most of their time trying to cuddle up to the soft mother and even when they went over to the wire-mother to get milk when the hunger got too bad, they tried to hold on to the cloth mother. Just typing this makes me cry. I saw pictures of these tiny little baby monkeys. The experiment was used to prove that mammals, including homo sapiens, have emotional needs and that only providing nutrition and keeping them healthy is not enough. But I think I could have told them that without the experiment.
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