You’re not likely to see them flooding casinos any time soon, but the University of Lethbridge’s Dr. Jean-Baptiste Leca and his colleagues are embarking on a study that may turn a population of Balinese long-tailed macaque monkeys into gamblers.
Leca, an associate professor in the U of L’s Department of Psychology, is teaming up with Dr. Rob Williams, a gambling research expert in the Faculty of Health Sciences, and Dr. Elsa Addessi, a cognitive psychologist and primatologist at the National Research Center in Rome, Italy, to explore whether monkeys have cognitive biases and behavioural responses that are different from, or similar to, that of humans when it comes to gambling activities.
“This is a follow-up on our object/food-bartering monkeys project, except that this time we are planning to implement some field experiments to test these monkeys’ abilities to engage in a series of gambling tasks,” says Leca, whose group is supported by a research grant from the Alberta Gambling Research Institute.
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Image via University of Lethbridge.