There was a lovely little study done recently which turned lazy monkeys into workaholics. Researchers figured out how to suppress a certain gene in rhesus monkeys, so that they would perform repetitive tasks without any reward as incentive.

Normally, the monkeys only do enough work to get a reward and then abandon their task. But by injecting a DNA strand into the monkeys’ brains, they got the monkeys to stop to knuckle down, play by the rules and never give up. Essentially, they figured out a biochemical way to do with society has been aiming for for thousands of years. What wonderful news for us humans, who share the same gene, apparently, with our hairy brethren.

[via Towards a Free World]