Opinion Spider Monkeys weave a complex web. Their intelligence says a lot about ‘state of nature’

The comedian George Carlin used to characterise “military intelligence” as an oxymoron. One wonders what he would have made of monkey intelligence. A study published in the journal npj Complexity has found that spider monkeys in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula run an elaborate intelligence-gathering operation. Agents are dispersed in cells, scout different areas, split and recombine seamlessly into different cells and brief each other, pooling and synthesising their knowledge to build up an increasingly granular intelligence picture. It’s a continuous process, and the same group of agents may never come together a second time. No silos, no bureaucracy, just quiet competence and good operational security — monkey intelligence (MI) runs a tight ship.

The objective of MI’s reconnaissance is to secure food supplies for their banana republic. The spider monkeys, who split up into groups of three or more collect and disseminate information that includes both location and timing — “an example would be if one subset of individuals would contribute the location of a food source and another subset the timing of the fruiting of that source”, the study says. When this knowledge is brought together, all can benefit from that food source.

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The study calls this a “compelling example of collective intelligence in natural conditions”. And in nature, all this happens spontaneously and voluntarily. It’s simply a matter of individuals sharing tips — with no centralised command and control; MI doesn’t have an “M” at its head. Would humans be able to do the same in the absence of authority and hierarchy? Hobbesian wisdom would point to a “war of every man against every man” but other thinkers have imagined, and presented evidence for, alternative ways of living together, some of which may have been practised by prehistoric societies. The idea, a spider monkey might argue, isn’t necessarily bananas.