The E-Sylum:  Volume 6, Number 20, May 18, 2003, Article 22

COULD MONKEYS WRITE NUMISMATIC LITERATURE?

  "Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of
  typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce
  prose the likes of Shakespeare.

  Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will
  make a mess. "

  "Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this
  week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the
  machine and failed to produce a single word.

  "They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday.
  "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

  A group of faculty and students in the university's media program
  left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in
  southwest England, home to six  Sulawesi crested macaques.
  Then, they waited.

  At first, said Phillips, "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," added Phillips, who runs the
  university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies."

  http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/documentation/

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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