Latest news with #Alouattapalliatacoibensis
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Capuchins have started abducting newborn howler monkeys in bizarre, deadly fad
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Wild capuchin monkeys have been kidnapping infant howler monkeys, putting them on their backs and taking them for a ride. The trend, which began with one male, spread to other members of the group, and has resulted in deaths of at least four infants since 2022. "The sort of rate at which we see the infants appearing suggests they are not just finding these infants, they are getting them," study co-author Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioral ecologist also at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, told Live Science. The unprecedented behaviour was spotted by camera traps set up on Jicarón Island off the coast of Panama. Panamanian white-faced capuchins (Cebus imitator) are social monkeys, living in groups in the forests of Central America. The monkeys are smart and learn fast, and were being monitored by motion-triggered cameras to study tool use. The team from the Max Planck Institute started putting the camera traps on the ground on Jicarón Island in 2017. "These monkeys don't have terrestrial predators, so these capuchins spend the overwhelming majority of their time on the ground," co-author Brendan Barrett, an evolutionary behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, told Live Science. The cameras revealed the capuchins using stones like hammers to crack open snails, fruit called sea almonds and hermit crabs. But Goldsborough, Barrett and their colleagues also saw something even more surprising. Related: Which animals have entered the 'Stone Age'? The first glimpse of the odd behavior was in January 2022, when one juvenile male capuchin — whom the researchers named Joker after the "Batman" character because of a scar near his mouth — was seen carrying an infant howler monkey on his back. In the months that followed, Joker was spotted carrying four different howler infants for periods of as long as nine days. And the behavior soon caught on. From September of the same year, four other young male capuchins were caught by the cameras carrying infant howler monkeys for days at a time. A total of 11 infant howler riders were spotted in all, the researchers report in a study published Monday (May 19) in the journal Current Biology. How the capuchins got hold of the infants is unknown, because it happened away from the cameras, but the researchers think the capuchins are abducting them from adult howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata coibensis). "It very likely happens in the trees," Goldsborough said. "I think the term abduction is realistic and adequate for this," Katherine MacKinnon, a biological anthropologist at Saint Louis University in Missouri, who wasn't involved in the research, told Live Science. MacKinnon said the howler monkeys are much bigger than capuchins, but they're slower. "I've watched them grapple with capuchins and it's like watching the howlers in slow motion and the capuchins on 45 record speeds. Howlers can put up a fight, but capuchins are in another class." The abducted howler infants seemed healthy at first, but were very young, so needed milk from their mothers to survive. Their health worsened in the days following their abductions and at least four of them died, probably from malnourishment. "We have confirmed deaths of four and for the others it's unknown. Some of them, the youngest ones, are one or two days old, so it's unlikely that a lot of them survived," Barrett told Live Science. Three infants were carried for at least a day after dying. In two sightings, the carrying male capuchins embraced their infant riders, but generally, they just carried them neutrally. However, the capuchins did seem to get annoyed if the young howlers did something they didn't like, such as attempting to suckle, and would bite or push them away. "We did sometimes see them being affectionate or affiliative towards the howler monkey infants," said Barrett. "It's almost like a kid having a jar of lightning bugs. They think it's cool. But from the lightning bugs perspective, it's not the best situation." So why have the capuchins been kidnapping baby howlers? There are anecdotal reports of female capuchins adopting the young from other species, and male capuchins do sometimes carry the young of other capuchins and play with them, but the researchers don't think they are doing it out of a desire to be caring. Given that carrying around the howlers doesn't seem to bring any kind of social benefit, Barrett suggests the male capuchins are doing it because they are bored and have nothing better to do — the highly intelligent monkeys have no predators and few competitors on Jicarón Island, giving them ample time for destructive social innovation. "It is a very capuchin thing to do. They're very curious. They like to poke and bother all other creatures," Susan Perry, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn't involved in the research, told Live Science. "I would guess that they don't mean any harm to these babies, but they don't get that the howlers need milk." "It only takes one member of these social groups to come up with a strange behavior," said MacKinnon, and then it can spread. She gives the example of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) that learned to wash sweet potatoes in the sea, after one female started the trend. Perry suspects it is linked to other male capuchin behavior. Males leave the group they were born into to find a new group to take over — but they need to stick together to make a success of it. "If they don't have male allies, they're basically sunk," she said. So, males do a lot of bonding when young. As part of this, they sometimes grab and carry around unrelated male infants, Perry said. "So, they are already primed to sort of kidnap infants." "Usually, [the capuchin] mum gets the infant back because they're traveling as a cohesive group," said Perry. "In this case, probably the capuchins grabbed the howlers and then ran for it. And they didn't see the howler group again and the mum didn't get her baby back." RELATED STORIES —Chimps use military tactic only ever seen in humans before —Male monkeys on tiny island have way more sex with each other than females, scientists discover —'Contagious' peeing may have deep evolutionary roots, chimp study suggests The behavior could be bad news for the howlers on Jicarón, which are an endangered subspecies. Barrett thinks there are about four or five groups of howlers in the area. "The number of infants we saw could be all the babies from those groups," he said. All the researchers Live Science spoke with said that the traditions of capuchins are often short-lived, and all hoped that this one would also peter out soon, perhaps when the males doing it leave the group. "They're gonna run out of howlers at some point, but I hope it will end before that happens," said Perry.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Bored Capuchin Monkeys Are Kidnapping Howler Babies in Weird New 'Trend'
Off the coast of Panama, on an island uninhabited by humans, a culture unlike any other has arisen. On Jicarón Island, white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus imitator) rule, unmolested by predators. In their peace, and safety, they exhibit fascinating behaviors, wielding stone tools to facilitate their foraging in a way that may have once been thought unique to humans. Now, the monkeys have taken their shenanigans a step further. They have been caught doing something that scientists had never seen before: kidnapping the babies of howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata coibensis) and carrying them around like some sort of bizarre accessory. After poring and puzzling over the observations, a team led by behavioral ecologist Zoë Goldsborough of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior concluded nothing explained the behavior as aptly as a fashion, or fad. "Scientists continue to uncover evidence of culture across animal taxa, and a behavior is considered cultural if it spreads between individuals via social learning," Goldsborough told ScienceAlert. "The howler-carrying behavior we describe is indeed part of this capuchin group's culture." Fads are not commonly identified in non-human animals. Examples include the peculiar intermittent salmon hats sported by orcas, and chimpanzees in Zambia wearing grass in their ears. These 'fads' are behaviors that the animals learn from each other, and serve no discernible purpose, like … planking, for example. Goldsborough and her colleagues had set up camera traps around Jicarón to monitor the capuchins' fascinating tool use. The scientists first got wind that something strange was going on with the monkeys when one individual, named Joker, was spotted going about his business with a baby howler monkey clinging to his fur. "It was so weird that I went straight to my advisor's office to ask him what it was," Goldsborough says in a statement. Alerted that shenanigans were indeed afoot, the researchers started paying closer attention. Goldsborough studied data collected by the camera traps, and found evidence of Joker carrying, at different times, four different baby howler monkeys. Then, it got weirder. Several months later, the behavior re-emerged. At first, the team thought Joker was resuming his strange hobby – but then they realized different capuchins were getting involved. In total, their observations over a 15-month period found five capuchins (including Joker) carrying 11 different howler monkey babies. At first, the puzzled scientists thought that the capuchins might be adopting the babies. But interspecies adoption is rare, and usually conducted by females. All five of the howler-carrying capuchins were males. In addition, the capuchins didn't seem interested in caring for the babies – all are assumed to have eventually died of starvation, with four confirmed dead. "The capuchin carriers do not seem to interact with the howler infants a lot besides carrying them. So they do not play with them, or try to groom them," Goldsborough explained to ScienceAlert. "To me, it appears less as if they want to keep the howler infant because they are so interested in them and interacting with them, but more that they carry them as an 'accessory' and are interested in the carrying behavior." But that's only part of the equation. There's the question of why are the capuchins carrying howler babies; the other question is, why these capuchins, and only these capuchins? "This is a fascinating question, since howler monkeys and capuchin monkeys co-occur in most of their ranges, and often interact, but never like this," Goldsborough said. Interestingly, the answer appears to be simple boredom. The capuchin population on Jicarón has no predators, and few competitors. They live a pretty cushy, relaxed life and may be somewhat understimulated, the researchers hypothesize – a lifestyle that has been linked to innovation in humans and other animals. "We think the conditions on Jicarón Island, specifically the lack of terrestrial predators and potentially greater amount of free time, are very conducive to the innovation and spread of behaviors," Goldsborough explained. The researchers plan to continue investigating this behavior to see if it evolves, or other fads emerge. Goldsborough also noted that she'd like to learn more about how the howler monkeys are responding to it. Until a handful of shit-stirring capuchins decided their babies might make dapper accoutrements, they were also living in a predator-free environment. Now, their babies lives' are being threatened. There may also be some fascinating philosophical insights to be gleaned. "One of the reasons our discovery elicits such interest is because it provides a mirror into ourselves. Humans often try to compare ourselves to other animals to find similarities and differences, and this is usually focused on positive qualities (e.g., language, tool use, empathy)," Goldsborough said. "However, if you think about it, humans have many seemingly arbitrary cultural traditions that harm other species. Finding that this type of culture is not limited to humans, but might also occur in other intelligent animals living in the right conditions, is a fascinating implication of our findings." The research has been published in Current Biology. You can also explore the documented rise and spread of the behavior on an interactive website here. Terrifying Video Shows Earth Cracking And Sliding During Myanmar Quake Scientists Recreated The Ancient Chemical Reactions That May Have Sparked Life Mystery of T. Rex's Debated North American Origins Finally Solved
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
These capuchins are abducting babies from howler monkeys—for fun?
On a tiny island off the coast of Panama called Jicarón, a male capuchin monkey called Joker appears to have started a disturbing trend. Camera traps caught Joker, nicknamed for the scar on his face, and other male white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus imitator) carrying kidnapped howler monkey infants on their backs. Researchers originally set up the traps in 2017 after a botanist visiting the island had reported the monkeys using stones to process food, which had never been seen before in the more slender kind of capuchin that inhabits Costa Rica and Panama. The cameras did reveal one group of capuchins using stone tools and anvils to crack open seeds, fruits, even crabs and snails. Yet as the team reports in the journal Current Biology this week, the footage also captured this bizarre baby-snatching fad, something never seen before. 'It was so weird that I went straight to my advisor's office to ask him what it was,' says primatologist Zoë Goldsborough of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. (Capuchins are known for their ingenuity—another species is 3,000 years into its own 'Stone Age'.) A recording dated January 26, 2022, first documented an unidentified young capuchin male carrying a howler monkey (Alouatta palliata coibensis) infant. The next day Joker was carrying that same infant. And so he did for days on end, at least until February 3. 'Our first thought was that maybe this infant had been abandoned by the howlers, and then adopted,' Goldsborough says. There was one known case of a marmoset monkey infant being adopted by a different species of capuchin in Brazil. But crucially, that baby was adopted by a female who could nurse it, says Patrícia Izar of the University of São Paulo, who reported that finding in 2006. Capuchin males, on the other hand, don't have a clue what to do. And so the kidnapped howler infant very likely died of starvation. What's more, the poor infant was making the kind of calls it usually makes when separated from its mom—and later on, some adult howlers called out as well, indicating the infant had not been abandoned, but abducted instead. 'We don't have footage of how the capuchins did this,' says study coauthor Brendan Barrett, a behavioral ecologist at Max Planck. 'But we know they are not afraid to gang up on much larger howlers.' Things were about to get a whole lot weirder. In April and May, Joker was seen carrying another howler infant, and then another. Footage also showed him dragging a third one, possibly dead, with some other young males tagging along. Then, between September and March, the situation escalated: Four other males were seen carrying live howler infants on their backs or bellies, sometimes for more than a week. Over a span of 15 months, at least 11 infants had been abducted—and few if any are likely to have survived. While there had been at least one earlier report of a capuchin from a larger species in Brazil stealing a howler monkey infant and carrying it off in its mouth, presumably to eat it, this study is the first to document white-faced capuchins abducting infants in this way—and researchers are especially fascinated that the behavior was subsequently picked up by other individuals, too. 'This observation is particularly intriguing because examples of the social spread of such behaviors with no apparent fitness benefits in animals other than humans are rare,' says Izar. Because there had been camera traps on the island for years before this behavior was ever observed, the researchers probably captured the first time it happened, or at least a very early occurrence. It is not unusual for young capuchin males to be seen carrying infants of their own species, says Susan Perry of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied Costa Rican capuchins at another site for decades, but was not involved in the current study. 'Capuchin males often try to steal capuchin infants, and they seem extremely pleased—as if they've won a prize—when they succeed. Until the infant gets hungry and starts crying for milk.' At that point, the infants tend to be abandoned. 'Fortunately, the infant's mother or other female relatives are usually lurking nearby to retrieve their infants.' Capuchin males have a preference for male infants, says Perry. 'We think the infants they develop a close relationship with early on will often grow up to become allies with whom they can make the risky move to another group to mate.' Abducting howler monkeys would obviously be useless in this regard, but perhaps their urge to carry infants is so strong that it sometimes misfires, says Perry. Goldsborough and Barrett agree, but they believe another tendency may be misfiring as well—the desire to do as others do. Perhaps Joker really just wanted to carry an infant, and then the others just wanted to have a go at it as well. Not that it improved their social standing—young males carrying howler infants appeared to be the target of aggression from other capuchins more often than those that weren't. But for a species in which learning a new technique to get your hands on difficult-to-reach but nutritious foods is an important part of growing up, perhaps the tendency to do as others do pays off often enough to be indiscriminate. The island environment could be a factor, too, the researchers argue. On the mainland, capuchins usually have to be wary of predators, and foraging takes up more time when you have to be constantly on guard and stay close to the group. On an island with plenty of food and hardly any threats, perhaps young males are just bored. 'Animals living on islands with no predators—or in zoos, were they are also safe and well-fed—have often been found to be more innovative and better at using tools,' says Goldsborough. In many cases, what bored animals come up with may be useless or even annoying, says Barrett. 'I've seen capuchins groom porcupines and smack cows on the butt. They mess with everything. They're just constantly testing and interacting with the world.' But occasionally, an individual will find that, hey, if you swing a rock at one of these smelly, colorful things on the beach, there's a tasty treat inside. Or that if you hang out with male infants, they'll have your back when they grow up. Some capuchins also develop strange rituals with no other purpose than strengthening social bonds. It's all in a day's work for this large-brained, hypersocial, tirelessly inventive species that in many ways resembles our own, even though our last common ancestor lived around 38 million years ago. But what about the poor howlers, an endangered species on Jicarón, whose babies are being abducted? 'It's tragic,' says Goldsborough, 'but as researchers, we don't intend to interfere with natural behavior. I hope the howlers will eventually adapt, for example by keeping a safe distance from this one population of capuchins, or that the capuchins themselves will eventually tire of this. Those howler infants can be quite a handful.'
