Phase Two with the Red-tailed Monkeys

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Red-tailed monkey participant, photo by Steve Gotz

Phase Two with the monkeys went great! 



The second phase started on June 29th, and on the first day, they were less excited than they were on the first day of Phase Two, but more excited than on the last day of Phase One. All of the blue boxes were opened first, although one yellow one was inspected without opening. There was lots of shredding of the boxes and paper, similar to day one of Phase One.






By the end of Phase Two, the monkeys had become very fast and efficient at opening the boxes, and showed much preference for interacting with the blue ones. There was lots of instances of active choosing of a blue box over a yellow, when for instance Ikea monkey came over to a yellow box, looked down at it briefly before running over to a blue box and promptly opening it. In the later days, there was no shredding of the boxes, similar to the pattern seen in Phase One, when it seems they become less excited about the boxes themselves versus what they have inside. In all four days of Phase Two, the blue boxes were given attention by the monkeys first.


The monkeys are far more aggressive in their treatment of the boxes and overall more playful with them, so I believe this is why they continued to open yellow boxes and play with the paper in the later days of this phase, while we will see that the lemurs did not.

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