Last Winter, I went on vacation to Southeast Asia with my girlfriend, and one of our stops was Monkey Island, near Nha Trang, Vietnam. Apparently the island was used for laboratory research by Russians in the past, and at some point the labs were abandoned and the monkeys were left to roam free. They have since taken over the island.
Lesson 1: Attract customers by specializing and providing a unique product or service.
These monkeys can probably be found elsewhere, too, but the fact that they inhabit this island and that they were originally research animals makes these monkeys more interesting. These monkeys are right there, not behind cages or walls, and you can go right up to them and feed them. Location is also important: the island is only a short boat-ride from the shore.
Lesson 2: Without law, survival becomes solely about power. The strong survive at the expense of the weak.
I believe that good law and good incentives are very important to have a just and prosperous society. I am a big fan of competitive law, and allowing the free movement of people in order to allow the free choice of those systems which are best preferred by those people. However, monkeys don’t believe in law, choice nor free markets: it seems like the only law they accept is the law of size: Whoever is the biggest gets to eat and make the rules!
I remember seeing an example of this in action. As we fed the monkeys food from a cup that we had bought at the feeding station, it would often happen that the biggest monkey, or the “King”, would come and pick food out of our hands. If anyone got near his food, he would physically wrestle the other monkey down to the ground and tell them to get lost or else, in monkey terms! There were a lot of other monkeys and monkey babies around that we wanted to feed, too, but the big one kept getting in the way.
Lesson 3: Fortune favors the bold
When we saw the first monkeys shyly appearing out of the trees, I started to grab some Pringles out of my backpack so we could start feeding them. No sooner had I taken the can out of my backpack than a monkey had jumped on me and snatched that can of Pringles right out of my hands! I didn’t even see him coming.
That little monkey ran off so fast, perched himself, and started bashing at the center of the Pringles in order to open it (I guess he didn’t know he could just take the lid off). He defended his ill-gotten rewards by oppressing any other monkeys that dared to come have a bite. Maybe he would have been in a better mood had he gotten some birthday freebies!
At the time, I was too shocked to do anything other than laugh with amazement at the conniving ways of the monkeys. My girlfriend was a little freaked out at their aggressiveness, especially since all of the other monkeys were pissed at the first monkey and they were fighting and screaming amongst each other for a good minute or so. I also felt bad that he ate all those Pringles, as they are probably not the healthiest thing in the world for monkeys.
Monkeys around the web
Thanks to First Gen American for coming up with the idea of doing a monkey carnival. 🙂 Here are some more monkeys around the web:
- Getting that Debt Monkey Off Of Your Back
- Interning with the Gibbons
- Lessons Learned From Primates…
- Manage Your Finances Like a Monkey!
- Monkeys and Retirement Planning
- Monkey Cards
- Why Gorillas don’t have 401K plans
So, reader, what lessons have you learned from monkeys? I have learned a few valuable things from these monkeys: Provide a valuable service, be a little bold, and laws are necessary to proper trade and exchange and true free markets, otherwise, it becomes a free for all where only the big monkeys prosper and thrive!
It is so funny that we both had 3 lessons to be learned from monkeys! I originally had 4, but the fourth was based on the smoking monkey who found a way to get cigarettes from zoo patrons and then sit and smoke. I hate smoking so much that I couldn’t bring myself to keep that lesson in there.
I would love to go to monkey island!!! My poor kids, they are neither big nor bold. They are going to have to come up with unique products to sell and just rely on their brains.
Great post.
The smoking monkey, haha. Coming up with unique products to sell might be the best thing!
What a great story! It sounded like quite the experience!
You story definitely makes the case for government with a fair and just legal system!
I wonder if you had to sign waivers to go on the lsland. The monkeys sound a bit dangerous.
No waivers, but this being Vietnam… I don’t think there’d be a way to sue, either. 😉 Yep, you definitely don’t want to mess with those monkeys.
Great lessons. I can just picture that one monkey sitting in the tree eating Pringles! Hahaha…
Maybe that’ll be us with the direction this country is headed!
He looked so guilty as he ate the pringles, always looking left and right to see if anyone was sneaking up on him!
I once reclaimed a hat for a Japanese tourist. It was taken off her head at Monkey temple in Bali. And the monkey was really pissed! I see monkeys everyday. They haven’t chased me while running, but I think they’ve gone after just about everyone else I know. I must look like a bad ass. A hat stealing bad ass.
Haha, that’s hilarious, Andrew. How did you manage to catch up with the monkey? They can be fast little buggers.
Sounds like an interesting place. How long will it take the monkeys to learn to trade?
Probably at least as long as us humans… we still act like the big monkey quite often!
60 Minutes had a segment on Jane Goodall Sunday and her Chimps. She though their behavioral resemblances to humans were uncanny. They tended to group into tribes, could be brutal to outsiders, took care of their own, and had a clear male-dominated leadership hierarchy.
I sometimes wonder about that. For animals I think we’ve done a pretty decent job at civilizing, but we still carry around these basic instincts inside of us. In today’s world, trade is often more beneficial, but group think and acting like the big monkey is what comes naturally to us.
That was certainly one aggressive monkey in the “Fortune Favors The Bold” section. Who do you believe that typically ends up ahead “the conniving” or “the collaborative?”
Haha. In the short-run the conniving, but in the long-run… probably the collaborative. I think game theory has some interesting things to say here, though I’m no expert in that. What I have read is very interesting though.
Kevin,
He actually ran right in front of me on a railing and I just snatched the hat quickly. I don’t think I’d do that today, but at the time, I was a monkey rookie
I don’t suppose you ever heard of the monkey woman (a woman who was attacked by a chimpanzee, I think, and later appeared on Oprah) — I suppose the little ones aren’t so bad, but these are wild animals after all! Watch out on those trails, Andrew! 😛
P.S. Weren’t we supposed to see a picture or video of you being chased by a pack of angry, wild boars?
Since I threatened to bring a camera with me, I haven’t seen a single wild boar. I got so used to seeing them and started taking them for granted. But when running home last night, I saw another runner coming towards me looking, to use a South African expression, “Shit scared”. He said that there were wild boars up ahead. I ran straight ahead, but didn’t see them.
Ha ha, it might be brute force for the boys but you gotta look to the lady monkeys to see the real interest and politics of monkeys/apes at play. Choosing partners strategising who to befriend and all sorts of stuff.
This lecture about giving apes money is very interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/laurie_santos.html
Haha, I’ve seen that lecture. I’m not sure what to make of it other than that people have different value scales depending on the direction and for a single bet. I think this study fails to look at the effects of repeated actions over time and varying sums (large, small) and how that would effect human players. It’s dangerous to extrapolate the results of small studies such as these over the entire set of human behavior and then draw conclusions based on that.
We’re close to the monkeys but not THAT close 😛
Oh, it’s always the ladies that make things interesting, isn’t it? 😛
The funniest part is this is the third post that I have read about monkeys this week. Who knews that monkeys would be so integral to the world of finance. LOL.
We all have a little bit of monkey inside us. 😉
Funny that you decided to take monkeys for example. 😀 I got really surprised when I saw them on a personal finance blog.
So long as the monkeys stay happy, everything is good. 🙂
Ha-ha! I loved your comment, ” I am a big fan of competitive law, and allowing the free movement of people in order to allow the free choice of those systems which are best preferred by those people.” What a spot-on statement!
Now, to answer your question regarding the lessons have I have learned from monkeys:
I have learned to always cover my behind and to supplement my diet by picking the bugs off of the big monkeys (dividends are so yummy…).
Haha, that’s a nice monkey lesson to go with the post! Interesting way of looking at it…
Just getting caught up on some reading, been busy…an enjoyable read Kevin!
Did you see this recently?
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/01/video-bonobo-sex-communication.html
Monkeys and apes might be day trading in the future 🙂
Crazy… haha, nope, I haven’t seen that! Know what you mean about being busy…!