Monkeys in Cage

Once there lived a psychologist. He thought of doing an experiment on monkeys. He contacted the government authorities and acquired permission to keep few monkeys in a cage on a rotational basis. He also agreed to free the monkeys once his experiment gets over.

As per the agreement, initially he received seven monkeys. He agreed that after a week, he would free one monkey and would receive a different monkey in return. The experiment duration was set to four months.

He kept the monkeys in cage and put a hanging banana at cage's top. As soon as monkeys saw the banana, they started running to eat it. However, the psychologist poured hot water on monkeys. In the beginning the monkeys could not understand, but after this happened for several times, they understood that hot water is poured whenever they tried to reach that hanging banana.

Now the monkeys started hesitating in going towards banana, and just ate whatever is provided to them in cage. Still there were few monkeys whose minds were distracted by seeing the banana. The irony was whenever even a single monkey made any effort to reach that banana, the psychologist would pour hot water on all monkeys. After a couple of days, no monkey would try to reach the banana. They knew if they tried, hot water would be poured on all of them. If any monkey even made slightest of effort, all other monkeys would catch and beat him.

After one week, a new monkey entered the cage and one of the existing monkeys was taken out and freed. The new monkey who entered the cage also saw the banana and started jumping to get that banana. However, all other monkeys just caught that new monkey and started beating him. This new monkey was confused by seeing such a behavior. But after it happened for several times, this new monkey stopped making any effort too.

In this way, weeks passed and a time came when none of those initial seven monkeys were present, who actually knew the reason for not trying to eat that banana. But even then, whenever any new monkey tried to reach out to that banana, all other monkeys would catch and beat him. After four months passed, the psychologist freed all the monkeys. However even when they are now free in forest, those monkeys have now stopped making any effort for eating banana, and would start beating any monkey who tries to climb any banana tree.