The Origin of Tradition: A Monkey Experiment

I got this in an email, and it was so interesting that i had to share it on my blog. I don't know if the experiment it describes has actually been carried out, but even if it is merely hypothetical, it does raise some thought-provoking questions. I have translated the urdu text beneath the pictures for those who don't understand the language. How traditions and customs are born? A group of scientists put 5 monkeys in a cage. In that cage they also placed a ladder and some bananas on top of it. Whenever a monkey began to climb that ladder, the scientists started sprinkling water on the monkeys standing below. After this event, whenever a monkey tried to climb that ladder driven by the desire to eat bananas, the monkeys standing below did not allow him to climb. After a while, despite the lure of bananas, no monkey had the courage to climb that ladder. The scientists decided to replace one of the monkeys. The first thing the new monkey did was to climb the ladder but immediat