http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/documentation/

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.


"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."


In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.


Then, they waited.


At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.


"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.


Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.


The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.


The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.


Phillips said the results showed that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that.


"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."

LOL, "Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

They won't be getting near my keyboard until they are better trained :eek:

ROFL

LOL!

Reminds me of that quotation:

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

I want a monkey.:cool:

I want one that could take care of angry customers that don't read the FAQ's.

untrained humans do almost the same when left alone at a computer

Monkeys prefer S's, wht members prefer ************.

What OS do they use? :D

Originally posted by timechange
The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council

This is the sad part. No wonder people are critical of the government funding art projects. I bet the paid a pretty penny for this too

Greg Moore