Monkeys Are Like Us, Capable Of Harrowing Self-Doubt

By Mark Lorenz on February 23rd, 2011

Have you ever looked at monkey and realized they’re just like us? They’re incredibly like us. And apparently filled with crippling self-doubt.

That’s right, monkeys can experience doubt. So when they’re grooming each other about the head or cocking their hands back to bombard you with feces, they might actually be debating whether or not their actions have merit or are necessary. A team of researchers taught macaques how to use a joystick to indicate whether or not an area of pixels was sparse or dense. A treat was given if they answered correctly, the game was paused if they didn’t answer correctly, and an option was given where the monkeys could pass on the question — like a particularly hard round of taboo – and the monkeys would actually doubt themselves before they gave answers to questions.

Monkeys are neurotic. Monkeys will be writing movies like Annie Hall, having a discussion about music that nobody else likes to listen to and constantly questioning whether or not their actions are angering a distant and angry lord. A prominent scientist asked –

“There is a big theoretical question at stake here: Did [this type of cognition] develop only once in one line of the primates – emerging only in the line of Old World primates leading to apes and humans?”

And I will never know.