prostitution in the laboratory

[N.N.]

Researchers at Yale-New Haven Hospital trained monkeys

to use a form of money: that is, the monkeys learned

that metal tokens provided by the experimenters could

be exchanged for food.

 

Experimenters saw how the monkeys responded when the

price of a particular food item was lowered (the monkeys

tended to buy more of the cheaper food). Other behaviors

similar to human behaviors with regard to money were observed.

 

The reason I'm mentioning this here is that a monkey was

observed exchanging a token for sex with another monkey.

The quote below is from an article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05FREAK.html

 

"(experimenter) Chen saw something out of the corner of

his eye that he would later try to play down but in his

heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was

probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in

the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys

truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex

immediately traded the token in for a grape.) "