Sheba sits with Sarah (another chimp), and two plates of treats are shown. What Sheba points to, Sarah gets. Sheba always points to the greater pile, thus getting less. She visibly hates this result but can’t seem to improve. However, when the treats arrive in containers with a cover bearing numerals on top, the spell is broken, and Sheba points to the smaller number, thus gaining more treats. The interpretation is that the numerals, because they don’t look tasty, “allow the chimps to sidestep the capture of their own behavior by ecologically specific, fast-and-frugal subroutines.” They
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