Typing Monkeys, but no Shakespeare
One Million monkeys with one million typewriters will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare - or so it has been said. However a study by Plymouth University suggests that monkeys are in fact more interested in defecating on the keyboard than plagarising the works of medieval playwrights.
They pressed a lot of S’s,researcher Mike Phillips said Friday.Obviously, English isn’t their first language.
[At first] the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.
Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard.
Eventually, having got over the novelty of it all, the monkeys got down to doing some serious writing. The six monkeys produced 5 pages of S’s and soon after some A’s, J’s, L’s and M’s.
Anyway, it’s clear that this experiment
was done for a little fun. Unfortunately not everyone will see it as a good way to spend public money.. But still I would have been more interested if more monkeys were used for a more significant amount of time and with typewriters rather than computers (you can’t hold down a letter and produce 5 pages of monotony with a typewriteer). Actually I’d be appalled if anyone spent any money to get a better dataset, that really would be a waste of money!
And because I like laughter here’s a quote by Robert Wilensky of the University of California that I found in the slashdot discussion of this topic:
We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
And finally, the article.
Just as a point of information, it was the university’s media department that carried out the experiment rather than actual scientists. Experimental scientists would be forbidden from putting such a dangerous piece of electronic equipment anywhere near an animal (especially an endangered primate) by the experimental animals welfare act or whatever it’s called. I don’t know what the effects of urinating on a computer that has been damaged by a stone wielding monkey are, but i’d say that electrocution has got to be a possibility.
Blimey! Scientists nowadays can’t get away with doing any interesting experiments at all! All the experiments I’ve ever wanted to do involved dangerous electronic equipment, animals and excretions. It’s just as well I’m changing career path eh? * grins *
I thoroughly enjoyed the article but especially the discussions afterwards. Humour is the greatest gift we have.