Research that matters

Researchers at Plymouth University in England, with a small Arts Council grant, could not quite test whether an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could produce the works of Shakespeare. But they did see what six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys would write with a computer over a four-week period. According to a report in The Guardian, the apes produced about five pages of text between them, mostly consisting of the letter S. According to professor Geoff Cox, the monkeys spent a lot of time sitting on the keyboard. (The Guardian, 5-9-2003)