Playing Poker With Monkeys
/ Editor / 26 March 2008 / Leave a comment
"DO chimps like to gamble?"
So asks the Daily Mail of its readers. The question is rhetorical because very soon the Mail tells us: "You bet they do."
Know that: "When given the choice between a safe bet and a high risk and high stakes option, chimps will always choose the latter."
The Mail says this means that chimps are the only members of the animal kingdom prepared to gamble.
The Mail is of course, wrong, as anyone who has seen the stills of dogs playing cards knows, so too those who have frequented the wrong end of the Las Vegas strip.
And then there is the news in the Times that the bonobo monkey is also partial to a punt on the termite races.
Interestingly, bonobos enjoy the safer bet, say scientists led by Sarah Heilbronner, of Harvard University.
This is all of interest for anyone who finds themselves sat with a table of monkeys and is uncertain how they will react to the flop.
Of course, odds are the same for all the creatures.
Although, punters may like to consider a divergence in opinion.
While the Mail says chimps share 98 per cent of their DNA with humans, the Times ups the ante and says two African great apes share more than 99 per cent of their DNA.
Anthropologists keen to look for more similarities between poker player and poker monkey can attend the next poker tourney and observe the antics of the Hendon Mob...
* If you look around the table and you can't see the monkey, the monkey is you...
