You'd think that monkey society would be pretty straightforward: They eat, they poop, they fling said poop at each other for no particular reason, and the rest of the time is spent having sex. If that isn't paradise, then it's pretty damn close. It's not like they spend their days paying for Internet porn and getting lied to by smooth-talking authority figures. Oh, wait, they totally are ...

5 Monkeys Pay to Look at Porn (But Only if It's Hot)

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Some of the greatest scientific developments happened by accident, like the time when 40 years of conclusive research were overturned when a monkey stared at his balls in a mirror. Seriously.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were testing the effects of an ADHD drug on rhesus macaques that had been given skullcap-mounted implants to monitor their brain activity. The scientists were surprised to see one of the monkeys looking at itself in a mirror and touching the implants, even though previous research had concluded that these monkeys didn't have self-awareness. This in itself was shocking enough ... but then the macaques started adjusting the mirrors and contorting themselves to look at their own junk, which usually isn't visible to them.

Luis Populin/newscientist.com

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"I am a tasty burger."

Yep, once the monkeys realized that they could see themselves, their first thought was "I wonder what my taint looks like." This proved that the rhesus macaques have a concept of self, like humans, and that they are major pervs, also like humans.

In a different study in the growing field of monkey boners, a group of researchers at the Duke University Medical Center took photos of female macaques' behinds and loaded them on a computer (it's unclear why they couldn't just type "monkey butts" on Google like the rest of us). The researchers then showed the pictures to male rhesus macaques and rewarded them with juice every time their eyes moved from picture to picture.

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To set the mood, the headphones are playing Yello's "Oh Yeah" on repeat.

However, they found that male monkeys were willing to give up juice to continue looking at compromising photographs of females. Not just any females, but high-ranking ones -- essentially, they were paying to look at top-quality porn, because even monkeys know that you can get the amateur stuff anywhere for free. On the other hand, when the researchers put low-ranking females on the screen, they had to give the macaques extra juice to make them watch. They had to pay monkeys to look at ugly butts.

So what does this prove? For starters, that monkeys discriminate against each other based on their social status, just like us. The low-ranking females weren't necessarily "uglier" than the high-ranking ones; they were just more submissive. The other thing this proves is that monkeys will give up material goods to get momentary satisfaction, which leads us to the fact that ...