I recently found an article on CNN about long-tail macaques and their life in the jungle. Not about their food preferences or use of primitive, simple tools but their use of complex economic concepts. I’m serious.
Michael David Gumert, who is both a primatologist and assistant professor of psychology at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, did the research during a 20-month stay in the jungle.
There were at least two commodities traded by the orangutans — sex and baby holding — using grooming time as currency. Whenever a male macaque would groom a female for around eight minutes, the female would mate with him nearly four times in the next hour and was far less likely to mate with any other males. That’s an efficient bartering system — for orangutans, at least.
In areas with higher levels of males, however, competition kicked in and drove “prices” up.  The females seemed to innately understand they were a more rare and precious commodity and were seen charging as much as twice as much, or 16 minutes of grooming, for their time. This process shows the primates seem to understand economic concepts innately.
We thought economics was mostly a human-developed system of efficient exchange before this study, but this and others like it give support to what researchers Ronald Noe and Peter Hammerstein have deemed the “biological market theory,” which attempts to look at animal behavior through the lens of economics. The researchers then took an Emeril-style initiative and kicked it up a notch by teaching one of the female macaques to open a box of apples.
She instantly gained celebrity status, and the grooming she received afterward was akin to that of dominant macaques in the group. She did not, by the way, don gawdy, oversized glasses and star in her own reality TV show.
The female macaque was able to gain more control in the group simply by gaining control of more resources — in stark contrast to certain human groups, where no matter how much cash you get (which wouldn’t happen anyway), you’re stuck. She was no longer a pariah, thanks to the almighty bling.
Stopping short of seeing if the orangutans would set up their own version of the New York Stock Exchange and sell derivatives to investors, the researchers taught another low-class macaque to open a box with apples inside. Then things got real. The macaques went into price competition, lowering prices to try to beat each other, until they met at an equilibrium distribution of grooming time. No kidding.
They had effectively set up a market with several commodities, a measurable system of currency, competitive prices and efficient exchange. If that doesn’t mess with you, Gumert suspects the market doesn’t end there. He thinks there may be unmeasurable effects on the group, such as leeway with food or having a buddy for backup in a later fight.
If you happen to believe God created everything, it means that Adam Smith’s “free hand” of the market may very well be the same hand on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, graciously touching Adam’s finger at creation, and economics is hard-wired into us all by our magnificent Creator.
For those who prefer a more biological or evolutionary perspective, this could mean that at some point in primates’ past, those who were able to work as a group to share resources effectively may have been able to reproduce more frequently, driving out many of those who could not.
The Bottom Line: Sometimes, it seems we’re just a bunch of monkeys getting paid in apples to watch monkeys get paid in apples.
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]