Four rhesus monkeys watched a Clint Eastwood movie – for scientific purposes. Image courtesy of J.M.Garg, Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
This week’s monkey fable features four indomitable rhesus monkeys.
Evolutionists believe that although human brains are bigger, they structurally resemble monkey brains.
Recently, Wim Vanduffel of Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and colleagues tested this hypothesis by showing 24 people and 4 rhesus monkeys the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly featuring Clint Eastwood.
Vanduffel and colleagues scanned the brains of the people and monkeys watching the film and noticed that the monkeys’ brains reacted to the movie slightly differently than the humans.
In other words, the researchers did not find support for Darwinian evolution. But at least the four monkeys were able to get a glimpse of the not-so-peaceful-goings on of Clint Eastwood and his fellow humans.
The research was published in the journal Nature Methods.
Source:
Grossman, Lisa. 2012. Clint Eastwood helps reveal secrets of brain evolution. New Scientist (5 February).
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