[HN Gopher] To understand our fascination with crystals, researc...
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To understand our fascination with crystals, researchers gave some
to chimps
Author : jimnotgym
Score : 81 points
Date : 2026-03-04 07:47 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| shagie wrote:
| Full article share link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/science/chimpanzees-cryst...
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Share links need accounts anyway? Is this new?
|
| _" You have free access to this story. Continue reading with a
| Times account"_
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| They're also into bananas
| gtowey wrote:
| What's wrong with bananas?
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| A sizable percentage of the human population is deathly
| allergic to bananas.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| And this is relevant how?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| My son is not, and he will let you know how not allergic he
| is to Bananas if he sees any that he is not eating.
| olivia-banks wrote:
| I'm mildly allergic to bananas, but I don't think the
| number of people allergic to bananas is "sizable."
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They're a nightmare for atheists!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfv-Qn1M58I
| MyHonestOpinon wrote:
| This is clearly a parody. right? right? please say yes.
| prophesi wrote:
| The intelligent design controversy during the mid 2000's
| were a fun time. I still have some Flying Spaghetti
| Monster merch.
| miningape wrote:
| I thought this was going to be the amazing atheist banana
| clip, was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of this
| instead
| Centigonal wrote:
| so are people! we overthrew multiple countries for banan
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "Bananoi", please. They aren't Latin.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Me too.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article that the chimpanzees only
| relinquished the crystals in exchange for _many_ bananas, so it
| seems they 're more into crystals...
| doubled112 wrote:
| I've often joked about inflation and that while TVs may have
| become inexpensive, food has not.
|
| Are you saying that I might be able to harvest the crystals
| in them and pay for bananas?
| chasil wrote:
| https://archive.ph/EHCxx
| boilerupnc wrote:
| archive.ph isn't working for me, but .is works
|
| https://archive.is/EHCxx
| talktalkmake wrote:
| You're talking ** Karl, PLAY A RECORD
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, this is very interesting, but there is
| something very funny about the idea that "give a chimpanzee stuff
| and see if they like it" is academic research.
|
| This could absolutely be a headline on The Onion.
| Razengan wrote:
| "Breaking: Animals Have Preferences"
| dmix wrote:
| > But he's also very interested in "the impact of crystals on
| the history of art and the history of mind,"
|
| This made my eyes roll a bit.
| omegared8 wrote:
| Sure seems stupid on first glance but most science seems
| pointless. It's only when several loosely interconnected ideas
| that prove something MIGHT be commercially viable do we find
| out that it was the first curious question that ... again seems
| stupid... was the seed of inivation
| buttermeup wrote:
| What are some examples of questions that at first seemed
| stupid yet became brilliant when connected with other
| seemingly stupid ideas?
| Retric wrote:
| A lot of early work into physics seemed like dumb questions
| at the time. When taken to the extreme "Do heavy objects
| fall faster?" tells you quite a bit about how the world
| works. And critically people intuited the wrong answers to
| many such questions before careful experimentation.
| buttermeup wrote:
| Obviously we have the benefit of hindsight, but "do heavy
| objects fall faster" doesn't seem like a stupid question
| to me in the same way that "do chimpanzees like crystals"
| does.
| Retric wrote:
| I think we can call them both stupid in they are
| malformed.
|
| Let go of a feather and brick on the ISS gets a different
| result than doing so on top of Mount Everest. Similarly
| understanding chimpanzees behavior is a deeper question
| here noticing some chimps find some crystals interesting
| in some situations and moving on.
| chao- wrote:
| Rather than a singular "question" that seems stupid,
| consider prime numbers. People toyed with prime numbers for
| centuries, asking _all sorts of questions,_ with little-to-
| no impact on the vast majority of humans. Fast forward to
| the age of telecommunications: suddenly massive innovations
| in cryptography are being built on knowledge of prime
| numbers that previously was a novelty.
| vharuck wrote:
| Yeah, math has a lot of ideas that seemed like silly
| puzzles when first explored. The term "imaginary numbers"
| was originally an insult (from Descartes!) for math
| involving the square root of negative numbers.
| iberator wrote:
| Microwaves were invented as hamster defrost machines.
| Seriously!
| gardncl wrote:
| And it worked, but unfortunately humans are too big for
| it to work on us.
|
| They were able to freeze hamsters entirely then reanimate
| them with a microwave.
| buttermeup wrote:
| While that sounds like an interesting tidbit, it also
| doesn't appear remotely true based off of the history
| sections in the wiki pages for microwaves and microwave
| ovens.
| Retric wrote:
| That article is somewhat revisionist.
|
| > In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave
| beam was _independently_ and accidentally discovered by
| Percy Spencer
|
| Sure, meanwhile using microwaves to heat stuff up dates
| back to the 1920's. WWII soldiers would regularly stand
| in front microwave equipment to warm up. The resonant-
| cavity magnetron was a British invention that finally
| made microwaves far more efficient to produce.
|
| The story about noticing a candy bar melting in his
| pocket is also kind of funny as that's what normally
| happens to candy bars in your pockets, further it means
| he didn't notice he himself warming up.
| matusp wrote:
| Some would say that science can be valuable even when it does
| not produce commercially viable results. Making money is not
| the pinnacle of human experience.
| scoofy wrote:
| There are plenty of scientific results that make us lose
| money. Un-leading our paint and gasoline, climate change,
| even just eating fresh fruits and veg.
|
| The main reason why the uninteresting results in science
| are always valuable is that negative knowledge _is still
| knowledge_. Every idea that gets kicked around and tested
| _was something that would probably have been interesting_ ,
| so knowing that it's most likely a dead end is worth
| knowing.
|
| Long live the Ig Nobel Prize! I wish we had a Epic Fail
| prize equivalent where to honor genuinely nonsensical,
| failed science experiments because they're often still
| worth doing.
| iberator wrote:
| Imagine if monkeys could communicate using crystals. That would
| be interesting - human - animal language!
|
| Research could lead into shit like cows TELLING us when feeling
| sick or know something etc. Food production, pets, police
| animals - a lot of potential uses.
|
| The same as literally chemistry and rocks gave us transistors.
|
| Almost no study is crazy.
|
| Playing with glass gave us telescopes and microscopes.
| manarth wrote:
| there is something very funny about the idea that "give a
| chimpanzee stuff and see if they like it"
|
| This is the premise behind the "Ignobel prize" - awards for
| scientific research which at first-glance may appear to be an
| April Fool's prank, but genuinely advance the cause of
| scientific research. "the extent to which a
| certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza"
| "what a nursing baby experiences when the baby's mother eats
| garlic" "some real plants imitate the shapes of
| neighboring artificial plastic plants"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
|
| https://improbable.com/ig/winners/
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Great comment. It's bananas. Chimps like bananas too, right?
| oniony wrote:
| I thought it was fruit flies.
| moi2388 wrote:
| What if you place a whole bunch of similar crystals in a pile,
| with only 1 or 2 smooth rocks?
|
| I'm willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and it's
| about rarity, not crystals.
| lich_king wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet they will go after the smooth rocks and
| it's about rarity, not crystals.
|
| Why? Crystals are pretty, rocks are not. We clearly prefer
| shiny colorful things to dull beige things, even if shiny
| things are abundant.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Well.. Some rocks are definitely shiney. It would be
| interesting to see if monkeys have any affinity for well
| polished rocks with pretty colors. Humans do like them, maybe
| not as much as crystals but they're nice nonetheless.
| axus wrote:
| You have a question, a hypothesis and designed an experiment to
| test it.
|
| The study had a harder question: "What properties of
| crystalline stones attracted them?". The abstract has this
| answer: "We found that transparency and geometric shape were
| the two attractors guiding chimpanzees."
|
| Maybe this is scientific proof for the diamond industry.
| egypturnash wrote:
| If you read the original paper (https://www.frontiersin.org/jou
| rnals/psychology/articles/10....) then they go into more detail
| on the piles of pebbles and what got taken; the graphs in
| figure 4 (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/artic
| les/10....) make it very obvious that the chimps loved the
| crystals.
|
| (an "euhedral" crystal is one with lots of obvious facets, an
| "anhedral" one is one that's been rounded down into a more
| pebble shape.)
| tantalor wrote:
| I'd gladly trade you a banana tomorrow for a crystal today.
| nivertech wrote:
| unsurprising, since they're also into Monoliths
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWs3c3YNs4
| yashasolutions wrote:
| wait until they hear about microservices
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| NYTimes competing with NYTimesPitchBot for funnier headlines, I
| see. What a bizarre and awesome piece of science. I like crystals
| for the miracle of uncountable numbers of atoms transferring
| symmetry from the smallest scale to the visible scale.
| tedmiston wrote:
| now give them The Orb
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(page generated 2026-03-04 23:00 UTC)