The Poker Playing Monkey

“DO chimps like to gamble?” asks the Mail.

“You bet they do.”

Indeed: “When given the choice between a safe bet and a high-risk and highstakes option, chimps will always choose the latter.”

The Mail says this means that chimps are the only members of the animal kingdom prepared to gamble.

The Mail is wrong, as anyone who has seen the footage of dogs playing cards knows.

And the Times says the bonobo monkey is also partial to a punt, albeit a safer bet than the chimps, say scientists at Harvard University.

This is all of interest for anyone who finds themselves sat with a table of monkeys and is uncertain how they will react to the flop.

Of course, odds are the same for any beast, no matter how hairy

Although, punters may like to consider a divergence in opinion.

While the Mail says chimps share 98 per cent of their DNA with humans, the Times ups the ante and says two African great apes share more than 99 per cent of their DNA.

Anthropologists keen to look for more similarities between poker player and poker monkey can attend the next poker tourney and observe the antics of the Hendon Mob…

If you look around the table and you can’t see the monkey, the monkey is you…

Anorak

Posted: 26th, March 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Strange But True, Tabloids Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink