The ever-growing, hugely-extensive mountain of evidence that animals have a state of consciousness and self-awareness gains another important bit of proof in this video.

Capuchin monkeys were trained to give a researcher a pebble and in return they would receive a slice of cucumber. The monkeys clearly like grapes much better. So when one began to receive grapes as the reward, the other started throwing back its pieces of cucumber. (Can you blame him or her?)

The monkey clearly doesn’t think this is fair and gets pretty pissed about the unfairness. Reportedly, the monkeys do get to live together and a more humane setting. But they go into the smaller enclosures for the experiments. While I am very opposed to much of the testing done on animals, this sort of study – as long as the animals are humane treated to the highest standards – is very important to our understanding of animal cognition and consciousness.

The next step needs to be for reports on studies such as this to be distributed far and wide. We need our elected officials and everyone to understand the meaning of facts uncovered in this research. We should no longer allow torture and cruelty to any being with self-awareness. It’s barbaric.

Note: Thanks go to my brother Gary for finding this video and passing it along.