Summer 2008: Of Note
the wheel goes round: Male rhesus monkeys strongly prefer toys with wheels while female monkeys play with both plush toys and wheeled toys, found Yerkes researchers.
Courtesy Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Boy Toys
Monkeys show same gender preferences in play as humans
Monkeys at play
“Male Monkeys Prefer Boys’ Toys” video of the Yerkes Primate Research Center from New Scientist
By Mary J. Loftus
Hot Wheels, it seems, aren’t only fun for human boys.
Male rhesus monkeys strongly prefer toys with wheels, while female monkeys play with both plush toys and wheeled toys, found researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. This parallels human children’s preferences. “Young girls show a broader range of play patterns than boys, playing with many different kinds of toys,” said lead researcher Janice Hassett. “We found this to be true with the female monkeys as well.”
The results of the study, which ran in the online edition of Hormones and Behavior, suggest that toy preferences might reflect hormonally influenced behavior and inborn cognitive biases.
“Sex differences in human toy preferences are often thought to occur primarily through socialization influences, such as parents encouraging sons to play with cars and trucks, and daughters to play with dolls and stuffed animals,” Hassett says. “If, however, preferences for gender-specific toys exist in other species, then nonsocial factors also may play a role.”
Researchers compared the interactions of eleven male and twenty-three female rhesus macaques with wheeled toys and plush toys.