Mark Liberman at Language Log explains what happened when researchers taught capuchin monkeys to use money:
After "several months of rudimentary repetition", the monkeys learned that one-inch silver disks with a central hole "were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day". Chen and Santos were then able to experiment with price shocks, wealth shocks, gambling games and so on. And along the way, the monkeys began on their own to exchange money for sex.I thought patriarchal capitalism was supposed to be responsible for the commodification of sex. But if monkeys are doing it...
