What if you place a whole bunch of similar crystals in a pile, with only 1 or 2 smooth rocks?
I’m willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it’s about rarity, not crystals.
What if you place a whole bunch of similar crystals in a pile, with only 1 or 2 smooth rocks?
I’m willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it’s about rarity, not crystals.
If you read the original paper (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....) then they go into more detail on the piles of pebbles and what got taken; the graphs in figure 4 (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....) make it very obvious that the chimps loved the crystals.
(an "euhedral" crystal is one with lots of obvious facets, an "anhedral" one is one that's been rounded down into a more pebble shape.)
They had piles of average 30 rocks and 3 crystals. They do not do the inverse. They did not account fo rarity.
You have a question, a hypothesis and designed an experiment to test it.
The study had a harder question: "What properties of crystalline stones attracted them?". The abstract has this answer: "We found that transparency and geometric shape were the two attractors guiding chimpanzees."
Maybe this is scientific proof for the diamond industry.
> I’m willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it’s about rarity, not crystals.
Why? Crystals are pretty, rocks are not. We clearly prefer shiny colorful things to dull beige things, even if shiny things are abundant.
Well.. Some rocks are definitely shiney. It would be interesting to see if monkeys have any affinity for well polished rocks with pretty colors. Humans do like them, maybe not as much as crystals but they're nice nonetheless.
While the ancient Romans liked transparent crystals, especially emeralds and beryls, they were not the most valued gems.
The most valued gems in Ancient Rome were the higher-quality varieties of noble opals and pearls, which are not transparent, but which show a variable play of colors, depending on the ambient light and on the angle of sight.
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