I’ve been thinking some more about those truculent capuchins, and the more I do, the more reassured I am. Forget Marx or those other folks. Socialism has no intellectual or moral foundation – it’s just the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys.

Other readers also found some rather different encouragement in the story. We are, it seems, hot-wired to reject welfare:

“The animal’s umbrage was even greater if the other monkey was rewarded for doing nothing. They did more than sulk, sometimes throwing the food out of their cage.”

And anyone who describes this too as the accumulated resentment of generations of monkeys is just being pedantic.