Uncanny Monkeys

I came across an interesting article today about a new study from Princeton University.

Robert Zemeckis wannabes beware -- apparently monkeys are susceptible to the Uncanny Valley effect. Researchers in Princeton's Department of Psychology subjected macaque monkeys to images of monkeys that ranged from cartoony to photo realistic. Like humans, the monkeys can look at photo images and cartoony images just fine - but there was a range in between that creeped them out.

According to the researchers, this is the first time that the uncanny valley effect has been observed in animals. They hope that it will shed light on a variety of disciplines from human cognition, to animal behavior, to 3D character animation.