Our new cat is smarter than a your monkey

Are you familiar with the old “monkeys in a room typing forever would eventually give you a work of Shakespeare” adage?  Well, while lesson planning a time back I came across this article in Wikipedia that details the infinite monkey theorem and describes its origins, mathematics, and experiments related to the concept.  The highlight of this article I will reproduce below, but, before you read it, keep in mind that this is the kind of monkey that was involved in the experiment:

In 2003, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes Crested Macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. One researcher, Mike Phillips, defended the expenditure as being cheaper than reality TV and still “very stimulating and fascinating viewing”.

Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. The zoo’s scientific officer remarked that the experiment had “little scientific value, except to show that the ‘infinite monkey’ theory is flawed”…  (From “Infinite Monkey Theorm” on Wikipedia.)

In comparison, MY CAt, as I am writing this, is straTEGICALLY PRESSING THE CAPS on and oFF TO HIS AMMUSEMENT. ALSO, HE IS MUTING AND umuting my music to get a rise out of me.

Now he’s ACCEssing my system files and attempting to fORMAT MY HARD DRIVE.

Thank goodness for the SPRAY BOTtle, huh?