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Artistic specimens

Twenty-somethings donning funky scarves and businessmen in neatly pressed suits danced around each other to find seats before the start of last Monday's ARS Scientia salon, an event held twice a month at the Chicago Cultural Center. Knowing I couldn't stay for the entire event, I gave up my seat for another attendee. With the 6 p.m. start time looming, strangers reluctantly split from their parties and plopped into the few random single seats available while two Cultural Center staffers quickly squeezed a few more chairs onto the floor for some of the remaining crowd that was spilling out the doorway.

We didn't know it, but during the find-a-seat commotion, Dario Maestripieri, professor of comparative human development and evolutionary biology—and one of the event's four panelists—logged our predictable pre-event behavior as only a researcher would.

Watch as Maestripieri turned his amusing observations of our shuffling into one of the highlights of the evening:

Joy Olivia Miller

• "How to Fight Monkeys" (Slate, Oct. 22, 2007)


• "Research on Rhesus Macaques Shows Monkey Tactics to Gain Power Are Much Like Human's" (Chicago Chronicle, Nov. 1, 2007)


• "Political Animals (Yes, Animals)" (New York Times, Jan. 22, 2008)


• "Popular Science: Two University of Chicago Professors Shed Some Light on the Animal in All of Us" (Chicago Weekly, Feb. 20, 2008)


• "The Secret of Our Success" (Excerpt from Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World by Dario Maestripieri, University of Chicago Press)

March 2, 2009