Planet of the Apes
Carl Feynman (carlf@atg.com)
Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:55:56 -0400
Robin D. Hanson wrires:
>Hal writes:
>>I saw a TV show last year showing monkeys who were trained to
>>harvest coconuts from palm trees. ... This is
>>apparently a common harvesting method in some parts of the world.
>
>Curious. I wonder how this task differs from other tasks to make
>this feasible.
Perhaps this species of monkey lives by eating fruit from trees. In that
case, this task would be very close to its evolved capacities. From the
monkey's point of view, it has trained a human to open coconuts for it.
--CarlF