Tinky's name (Tinklepaugh) came from a Historical Methods of Psychology class. Tinklepaugh is the last name of a psychologist who studied the expression of frustration and agression in chimps. He was government funded and his tests ran something like this: Using two rooms which were separated by a large glass window, a monkey (who had been on a regulated feeding schedule and had been moved to a latent feeding schedule, i.e. 1 hour past 'normal' feeding time) was shown a handler placing a banana under a box. The monkey was then released to go into the other room and get the banana (or some other tempting fruit). However when the monkey moved the box to get the fruit, they would find not the banana but a piece of lettuce. As you can imagine the monkey was disappointed. Later on when the experiments were repeated with increased latent feeding times the levels of frustration and agression increased. Eventually, they pulled that on one monkey who became so mad he started...um...throwing his droppings around the room.
Basically, I named my hamster after a man who obtained goverment funding to confirm that when monkeys get mad, they throw their droppings. That, and I just really liked the sound of the name 'Tinklepaugh.' :P
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