A Word on 'The Hundredth Monkey Syndrome'

The hundredth monkey syndrome is a classic story. There was a group of islands in the South Pacific inhabited by monkeys, which experienced a severe drought. The monkeys were beginning to starve due to lack of food so a team of anthropologists visited one of the islands to try to help. They discovered that there were sweet potatoes on the island, so they showed one of the monkeys how to dig up the root and eat it. By the next day, all the monkeys had learned how to dig up roots and were eating. The anthropologists went to the next island and to their amazement, they found the monkeys were already digging up the sweet potatoes and were eating them. In fact, as they visited each island, the monkeys were eating sweet potatoes. Somehow, the education they provided to the original monkeys transferred by some illogical means to all the monkeys on all the islands (The Messenger)