Five monkeys and a banana

Have you heard the story of the five monkeys and a banana?

** Disclaimer: this is a fictional story loosely based on a social experiment conducted in the sixties. No monkeys were harmed in my story**

A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage. In the cage, they also placed a ladder with a banana at the top.

Every time a monkey climbed the ladder to grab the banana, the remaining four monkeys were sprayed with ice-cold water. This was repeated several times. After a while, the monkeys learned that climbing the ladder had unpleasant consequences, and every time a monkey tried to go up the ladder, the others would stop him by pulling him down and beating him up.

Eventually, none of the monkeys dared go up the ladder, regardless of the temptation.

When that happened, the scientists switched off the cold water. They then replaced one of the monkeys with a new one. The first thing this new monkey did was to jump on the ladder to take the banana, but he was immediately pulled down and beaten up by the other four monkeys. That taught him not to climb the ladder, even though he never knew the reason behind his beating.

A second monkey was replaced with a new one. The same thing happened again: he tried to climb the ladder to reach the banana and was swiftly beaten up by…