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Random quote
I'm reading Congo again. Not my favorite Crichton book, but it's been a while. There's a lot of discussion of animal research early on, and it includes this little story, which I found quite funny:
A new pharmaceutical factory was built in Western Australia. In this factory all the pills came out on a conveyor belt; a person had to watch the belt and press buttons to sort the pills into seperate bins by size and color. A Skinnerian animal behaviorist pointed out that it would be simple to teach pigeons to watch the pills and peck colored keys to do the sorting process. Incredulous factory managers agreed to a test; the pigeons indeed performed reliably, and were duly placed on the assembly line. Then the RSPCA stepped in and put a stop to it on the grounds that it represented cruelty to animals; the job was turned over to a human operator for whom it did not, apparently, represent cruelty.
Another triumph of the smelly, tree-hugging hippy over the Man and, of course, common sense. No clue if the story is in any way true, but it's totally believable and hilarious, and in the end, isn't that what's really important?
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