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http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2417

I think the main part of this article are the funny monkey pictures to the side and didn't have a link to the monkey research, but I still think it's worthy of discussion in the psychology forum.

The main point of the article is that monkeys hang out of groups of up to fifty, because that's all their monkey brains can handle to track. Any more monkey's that the monkey meets is outside the "Monkeysphere" and is not seen as another monkey. The size of the monkey's brain related to how many other monkeys the monkey would have in it's "Monkeysphere", and when scaled up to a human brain that the max was around 150.

Meaning that a human is not able to have more then 150 people in his or her Monkeysphere. Meaning that there would be up to 150 others the person would care about, beyond that it's a faceless being or something or they just don't care about those people.

Though I think the Monkeysphere was made up, it does raise some interesting points. Because there are terrible things that happen to people around me that I really don't care about. And on Friday my friend left for Paris, nothing bad, but since he is in my "Monkeysphere", I of course miss him.

So, do you think that people are able to really care about more then 150 people? And which was your favorite monkey picture?

Well, the Monkeysphere theory does seem possible. If it's true, we can only care for about 150 people because it's those people that we're used to the personalities or actions of, and any outside activity could be considered alien, or even offensive and contradictory to the norm.
And I don't think there was one monkey picture I didn't like.

Ha, yes I've read that one before. I very much enjoyed it and I think it makes some points in a roundabout way. I wish it actually had a couple of references, but I guess thats too much to ask from a comedic article. I'd particularly like to know if those studies on the monkey brain are legit. Anyone want to do the hard work for me on that one? blaugh

You do realize the greater joke of it all though right? It slaps you inthe face ont he second page or so with, and I'm paraphrasing, "Anyone who claims to have all the answers in a simple package doesn't" while the article self is actually aiming to be just that. Very funny.