- Don’t get me wrong, this is very interesting, but there is something very funny about the idea that “give a chimpanzee stuff and see if they like it” is academic research.
This could absolutely be a headline on The Onion.
This is the premise behind the "Ignobel prize" – awards for scientific research which at first-glance may appear to be an April Fool's prank, but genuinely advance the cause of scientific research.there is something very funny about the idea that “give a chimpanzee stuff and see if they like it”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize"the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza" "what a nursing baby experiences when the baby’s mother eats garlic" "some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants"- Sure seems stupid on first glance but most science seems pointless. It’s only when several loosely interconnected ideas that prove something MIGHT be commercially viable do we find out that it was the first curious question that … again seems stupid… was the seed of inivation
- Some would say that science can be valuable even when it does not produce commercially viable results. Making money is not the pinnacle of human experience.
- There are plenty of scientific results that make us lose money. Un-leading our paint and gasoline, climate change, even just eating fresh fruits and veg.
The main reason why the uninteresting results in science are always valuable is that negative knowledge is still knowledge. Every idea that gets kicked around and tested was something that would probably have been interesting, so knowing that it's most likely a dead end is worth knowing.
Long live the Ig Nobel Prize! I wish we had a Epic Fail prize equivalent where to honor genuinely nonsensical, failed science experiments because they're often still worth doing.
- What are some examples of questions that at first seemed stupid yet became brilliant when connected with other seemingly stupid ideas?
- Rather than a singular "question" that seems stupid, consider prime numbers. People toyed with prime numbers for centuries, asking all sorts of questions, with little-to-no impact on the vast majority of humans. Fast forward to the age of telecommunications: suddenly massive innovations in cryptography are being built on knowledge of prime numbers that previously was a novelty.
- Yeah, math has a lot of ideas that seemed like silly puzzles when first explored. The term "imaginary numbers" was originally an insult (from Descartes!) for math involving the square root of negative numbers.
- A lot of early work into physics seemed like dumb questions at the time. When taken to the extreme “Do heavy objects fall faster?” tells you quite a bit about how the world works. And critically people intuited the wrong answers to many such questions before careful experimentation.
- Obviously we have the benefit of hindsight, but “do heavy objects fall faster” doesn’t seem like a stupid question to me in the same way that “do chimpanzees like crystals” does.
- Microwaves were invented as hamster defrost machines. Seriously!
- While that sounds like an interesting tidbit, it also doesn’t appear remotely true based off of the history sections in the wiki pages for microwaves and microwave ovens.
- That article is somewhat revisionist.
> In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was independently and accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer
Sure, meanwhile using microwaves to heat stuff up dates back to the 1920’s. WWII soldiers would regularly stand in front microwave equipment to warm up. The resonant-cavity magnetron was a British invention that finally made microwaves far more efficient to produce.
The story about noticing a candy bar melting in his pocket is also kind of funny as that’s what normally happens to candy bars in your pockets, further it means he didn’t notice he himself warming up.
- And it worked, but unfortunately humans are too big for it to work on us.
They were able to freeze hamsters entirely then reanimate them with a microwave.
- "Breaking: Animals Have Preferences"
- > But he’s also very interested in “the impact of crystals on the history of art and the history of mind,”
This made my eyes roll a bit.
- Imagine if monkeys could communicate using crystals. That would be interesting - human - animal language!
Research could lead into shit like cows TELLING us when feeling sick or know something etc. Food production, pets, police animals - a lot of potential uses.
The same as literally chemistry and rocks gave us transistors.
Almost no study is crazy.
Playing with glass gave us telescopes and microscopes.
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- The study was in Spain- do European countries have the same sort of backlash to this stuff? Is there a province in Spain that has the equivalent to 'the senator from Indiana' that is the stereotypical anti-NSF figure in US politics? Genuinely curious about this.
- Have Americans tried giving them crystals
- Full article share link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/science/chimpanzees-cryst...
- Share links need accounts anyway? Is this new?
"You have free access to this story. Continue reading with a Times account"
- unsurprising, since they're also into Monoliths
- wait until they hear about microservices
- archive.ph isn’t working for me, but .is works
- NYTimes competing with NYTimesPitchBot for funnier headlines, I see. What a bizarre and awesome piece of science. I like crystals for the miracle of uncountable numbers of atoms transferring symmetry from the smallest scale to the visible scale.
- You're talking ** Karl, PLAY A RECORD
- I'd gladly trade you a banana tomorrow for a crystal today.
- They're also into bananas
- so are people! we overthrew multiple countries for banan
- "Bananoi", please. They aren't Latin.
- It's mentioned in the article that the chimpanzees only relinquished the crystals in exchange for many bananas, so it seems they're more into crystals...
- I've often joked about inflation and that while TVs may have become inexpensive, food has not.
Are you saying that I might be able to harvest the crystals in them and pay for bananas?
- What's wrong with bananas?
- They're a nightmare for atheists!
- I thought this was going to be the amazing atheist banana clip, was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of this instead
- This is clearly a parody. right? right? please say yes.
- The intelligent design controversy during the mid 2000's were a fun time. I still have some Flying Spaghetti Monster merch.
- A sizable percentage of the human population is deathly allergic to bananas.
- I'm mildly allergic to bananas, but I don't think the number of people allergic to bananas is "sizable."
- My son is not, and he will let you know how not allergic he is to Bananas if he sees any that he is not eating.
- And this is relevant how?
- Me too.
- now give them The Orb
- What if you place a whole bunch of similar crystals in a pile, with only 1 or 2 smooth rocks?
I’m willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it’s about rarity, not crystals.
- If you read the original paper (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....) then they go into more detail on the piles of pebbles and what got taken; the graphs in figure 4 (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....) make it very obvious that the chimps loved the crystals.
(an "euhedral" crystal is one with lots of obvious facets, an "anhedral" one is one that's been rounded down into a more pebble shape.)
- > I’m willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it’s about rarity, not crystals.
Why? Crystals are pretty, rocks are not. We clearly prefer shiny colorful things to dull beige things, even if shiny things are abundant.
- Well.. Some rocks are definitely shiney. It would be interesting to see if monkeys have any affinity for well polished rocks with pretty colors. Humans do like them, maybe not as much as crystals but they're nice nonetheless.
- You have a question, a hypothesis and designed an experiment to test it.
The study had a harder question: "What properties of crystalline stones attracted them?". The abstract has this answer: "We found that transparency and geometric shape were the two attractors guiding chimpanzees."
Maybe this is scientific proof for the diamond industry.
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80 points by jimnotgym 14 hours ago | 49 comments