At first, the behavioral ecologist Zoë Goldsborough thought that the small figure seen on the back of a prevail In one of his photographic traps recordings was just a puppy of the same species. But something, she said, seemed strange. When looking more closely, he noticed an unusual color. Immediately, he sent a screen capture to his research colleagues. They were intrigued.
“I realized it was really something we had never seen before,” said Goldsborough. A more detailed analysis of the video and the cross check between the researchers revealed that the small figure was actually a monkey of another species – a buge puppy .
“I was shocked,” said Goldsborough.
Revising the rest of her material, she noticed that the same adult monkey-a white-barred monkey nicknamed “Joker” because of a scar in the mouth-appeared in other images also carrying a boiler. Then he realized that other males of the same species, scientifically known as Cebus Capucinus imitatorthey were doing the same thing. But why?
Based on 15 months of photographic traps recordings at its research site on Jicarón Island – a small island 55 kilometers from Panama Coast and part of Coiba National Park – Goldsborough collaborators of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, from the Smithsonian Institute of Tropical Research Institute, among others, investigated this unusual behavior in search of an explanation.
They found that, starting with the “Joker”, four male monkeys underdats and youth kidnapped at least 11 boast puppies between January 2022 and March 2023. Without evidence that monkeys were eating, taking care of or playing with the pups, the study’s authors suspect that this kidnapping behavior is a kind of “cultural fashion”-and possibly a symptom of the symptoms-and possibly a symptom of the symptoms-and possibly a symptom of those-and possibly a symptom of the symptom Unique conditions of monkeys in the Jicarón ecosystem. They released their initial discoveries on Monday in Current Biology magazine.
Still, many questions remain. And unraveling this mystery can be crucial, according to the researchers. The jicarón bugos population is an endangered subspecies, called the black buge (Alouatta Palliata Coibensis), according to the Red List of the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN), which evaluates globally the vulnerability of species to extinction. In addition, the mothers boast gives light on average only once every two years.
Hypotheses in evolution
“Examining the case of kidnapped monkeys was kind of a roller coaster, where we had several different interpretations and then found something that refuted each one of them,” said Goldsborough, the main author of the study and doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz.
Jicarón Island is disabled by humans. Without electricity and with rocky terrain, scientists need to transport their equipment and materials by boat when the tide is favorable, which makes the face-to-face observations of the monkery-pregnant arisks. Therefore, they use photographic traps: Movement hidden and driven cameras that capture photos and videos of the pregnant monkeys living on the floor.
But there is a great limitation on this work: you don’t know what you can’t see, and the photographic traps don’t capture what happens at the top of the trees, where the bugies live. Therefore, the study team could not definitively confirm how, when or why the pregnant monkeys kidnapped the puppies.
At first, the researchers thought it was a rare and isolated case of adoption. Monkeys are known to “adopt” abandoned puppies of the same species or others. But Joker was not taking care of his bugs – he only carried them on his back, with no apparent benefit to himself, until the puppies were starving because they had no access to breast milk.
This behavior is strange for male primates, said Pedro Dias, primatologist at Veracruzana University in Mexico, who studies the Mexican black bugies and did not participate in the research. In Primatology, it is quite common for females to adopt or kidnap puppies to take care of them by maternal instinct, he explained. But in Jicarón, the males were not offering maternal care.
When the behavioral ecologist Corinna show read for the first time about the monkey kidnappings in Jicarón, she suspected something else. “They are probably eating these puppies,” said Most, an associate professor at Iowa State University who studies babo, referring to his first thought about the case.
The kidnapping for predation purposes is not uncommon in the animal world, Most added, who also did not participate in the research. But as she learned more about the team’s observations, she was surprised to realize that this was not happening in this case either.
Instead, the pregnant monkeys carried the bung pups for days, with few interactions-no joke, minimal aggression and little interest. Because they would spend energy to steal puppies is still largely a mystery, said Brendan Barrett, study co -author, behavioral ecologist and golden gardener.
However, it is important to highlight that these island’s preaching monkeys have evolved in a different environment from their continent’s relatives, Barrett explained. The pregnant monkeys are “destructive and exploratory agents of chaos,” he said. Even on the continent, they destroy things, attack wasp nests, fight each other, disturb other species, and move everything just to see what happens.
On an unlucky island, “this makes it less risky to do stupid things,” said Barrett. The island’s pregnant monkeys can also spread more because they do not need the group’s strength for protection, which allows them to explore more freely.
With this relative safety and freedom, Jicarón’s preaching monkeys may be a little bored, the researchers suggested.
The influence of boredom
Boredom, it seems, it can be a key factor for innovation – especially on islands and particularly among younger individuals of a species. This idea is the focus of the Goldorough Thesis research on the Jicarón and Coba pregnant monkeys, the only monkey populations of these areas that were observed using stones as tools to break nuts. Consistent with the kidnappings, only males use Jicarón tools, which is still a mystery for researchers.
“We know that cultural innovation, in many cases, is linked to younger and not the older ones,” said Dias.
For example, the washing behavior observed in pregnant monkeys on Koshima Island in Japan was first discovered in a young female nicknamed IMO.
There are some possible explanations for this, Dias explained. Adolescence is a phase in which primates become independent of mothers, starting to seek food and explore on their own. At this stage, monkeys are not yet fully integrated into the group’s society.
In addition, the “superimitation”-a tendency in human children to imitate others even without understanding them-may be involved, Most suggested.
This superimitation is not found in other animals, showed Most, but “I almost feel that this other pregnant monkeys are doing,” perhaps as a way to socially connect with the Joker, she noted.
Most commented that it is generally believed that necessity, not free time, be the mother of invention in nature. But “this article presents a good argument for the idea that sometimes really intelligent animals, such as pregnant monkeys, simply get bored,” he added.
People and other primates share a certain level of intelligence, defined by the use of tools and other metrics, but some shared features may be less desirable, said Goldborough.
“One of the ways in which we are different from many animals is that we have many of these arbitrary cultural traditions, almost without function, which really harm other animals,” she added.
As a child, growing up in the northeast of the United States, Barrett said he used to take frogs and fireflies in glass jars while exploring nature. Although I have never intended to hurt them, he knows that these activities are usually not pleasant to animals.
It is possible that the sequestration behavior of the pregnant monkeys will be equally arbitrary-if not, for them, moderately fun. Barrett and Goldborough said they expect this new behavior to disappear, just as fads between humans come and go. Or maybe the bugos realize what is happening and adapt their behavior to better protect their puppies, added Goldborough.
“It’s kind of a mirror that reflects on ourselves,” Barrett said, “From us apparently doing things to other species that can harm them and seem atrocious, but they don’t have a real purpose.”
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This content was originally published in monkeys kidnap puppies of another species and intrigue scientists; Understand on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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