The Hundredth Monkey Effect

This phenomenon is considered to be due to critical mass. When a limited number of people know something or do something in a new way, it remains the conscious property of only those people. The Hundredth Monkey Syndrome hypothesises that there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field of “energy” is strengthened so that new awareness is picked up by almost everyone.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect was first introduced by biologist Lyall Watson in his 1980 book, ‘Lifetide.’ He reported that Japanese primatologists, who were studying Macaques monkeys in the wild in the 1950s, had stumbled upon a surprising phenomenon. While they were studying the habits of monkeys on some islands in the ocean off the shores of Japan, they found one particularly smart little fellow and taught it to wash its food before eating it. He learned to do this quite quickly. Soon the other monkeys in his family also began to wash their food before eating it. Later this behaviour spread to other monkeys in the clan. About the time one hundred monkeys were washing their food prior to eating it, suddenly all the monkeys on all the islands, some thousands of miles away, began to wash their food before eating it. This surprising observation became known as the Hundredth Monkey Effect and has been repeatedly observed in nature. Incidentally this same phenomenon is true in humans as well. It is part of the reason we have trends in fashion, the economy, and politics, etc.