Monkey Business?

"Monkey Business" is how the news on our SBS station described the recent findings in the United States about the behaviour of primates.

In the USA (at least) there is an obsession with celebrities. The tests which have been conducted with Rhesus monkeys appear to show that there is something hard wired in primates that ensures that they actually choose to look at pictures of a dominant female's face or her hindquarters in preference to giving in to something as fundamental as thirst.

It appears that these primates at least have a greater need to identify with the dominant females than their basic needs.

What does this tell us in the human world?

It would be interesting to see if the next person to be charged with some offence like ogling uses the research to suggest that he is hard wired - like all primates to ogle what he regards as a dominant female.

Let's bet that someone will use this defence. I wonder what the courts would make of it?

More to the point I wonder what the church would make of it? After all they are the ones telling us that we have free will. Perhaps this only applies to those aspects of our lives that we actually have some control over.