Latest news with #Capuchins
Express Tribune
20-05-2025
- General
- Express Tribune
Wildlife dept opposes relocation of seized exotic monkeys to Lahore
Monkeys under the custody of the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation, which they were handed over to after being rescued from an illegal consignment at Karachi airport. PHOTO: ACF Listen to article The Sindh Wildlife Department has formally opposed the proposed relocation of 26 exotic monkeys — Capuchins and Marmosets — from Karachi to Lahore, urging the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) to reconsider its directive issued on May 8, 2025. The department has called for adherence to legal protocols and scientific standards in dealing with the animals, which were seized in December 2024 at Jinnah international airport, after being illegally imported from South Africa using forged documents. The monkeys were confiscated by Pakistan Customs in violation of both national and international wildlife laws. Following the seizure, the animals were placed in the care of the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF), a private animal welfare facility, on an emergency basis. Despite the matter being sub judice before a competent Customs court, the deputy conservator of wildlife, Ministry of Climate Change in Islamabad, directed the animals be transferred to a facility in Lahore. The Sindh Wildlife Department has raised serious concerns over the legality of this directive, warning that such action — without court approval — could compromise judicial proceedings and violate procedural integrity. In April 2025, the Sindh chief secretary convened a high-level virtual meeting to address the issue. Attendees included representatives from the Ministry of Climate Change, Pakistan Customs, Sindh Wildlife Department, WWF-Pakistan, and other key stakeholders. Subsequently, a technical committee was constituted by the federal secretary MoCC to assess the case and provide evidence-based recommendations grounded in law, science, and animal welfare. The joint report submitted by the Sindh Wildlife Department and WWF-Pakistan concluded that relocating the primates to Lahore would be detrimental to their health and welfare. It stressed that such a move would contradict legal standards and sound scientific practices. The report pointed out that the proposed Lahore facility lacks the species-specific infrastructure and expertise required to care for tropical primates, citing previous failures in hygiene, veterinary care, behavioral enrichment, and animal welfare. Despite these findings, the Ministry of Climate Change issued a recommendation on May 8 for the transfer of the animals to Lahore — without consulting the constituted committee or reviewing its report. The Sindh Wildlife Department, in its formal response, expressed concern over the ministry's unilateral action and the absence of any communication with the trial court where the matter is currently under legal scrutiny. The department stated that all wildlife found within Sindh's territorial jurisdiction is protected under Section 21 of the Sindh Wildlife Protection Act, 2020. Moreover, Rule 43 of the Sindh Wildlife Protection Rules, 2022, places the legal onus on airlines or transport operators involved in illegal wildlife importation to facilitate either deportation or lawful disposal, based on the wildlife officer's recommendation. From a scientific standpoint, the department strongly objected to relocating the monkeys, which are highly sensitive New World primates adapted to stable tropical climates. Capuchins and Marmosets require specific environmental conditions, including temperature regulation, enriched enclosures, social groupings, specialized diets, and experienced veterinary care—resources currently lacking at the Lahore facility. A senior official from the Sindh Wildlife Department urged the Ministry of Climate Change to revisit the findings of the technical committee and to reconvene the multi-stakeholder forum before making any final decision.
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Video suggests capuchin monkeys ‘kidnap' baby howler monkeys, scientists say
Scientists have spotted surprising evidence of what they describe as monkey kidnappings while reviewing video footage from a small Panamanian island. Capuchin monkeys were seen carrying at least 11 howler babies between 2022 and 2023. 'This was very much a shocking finding,' said Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioural ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. 'We've not seen anything like this in the animal kingdom.' The monkeys' motivations remain under investigation. Capuchins are house cat-size monkeys found in South America and Central America. They are long-lived, clever and learn new behaviours from each other. One group of capuchins in Panama has even learned to use stone tools to crack open nuts and seafood. Goldsborough and other researchers at Max Planck and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute had set up more than 80 cameras to study capuchin tool use, but were surprised to see the first howler babies appear in early 2022. The footage showed the capuchins walking and pounding their stone tools with baby howlers on their backs. But cameras did not capture the moments of abduction, which scientists said likely happened up in the trees, where howlers spend most of their time. 'Our window into this story is constrained,' said co-author Margaret Crofoot of Max Planck and the Smithsonian. The findings were published on Monday in the journal Current Biology. In most or all cases, the baby howlers died, researchers said. Infant howler monkeys would normally be carried by their mothers while still nursing. All the babies in the video – from a few weeks to a few months in age – were too young to be weaned. 'A hopeful part of me wants to believe some escaped and went back to their mothers, but we don't know,' said Crofoot. The videos recorded a few instances of young capuchin males still carrying howler babies that had died, likely from starvation. Many animals – from gorillas to orcas – have been observed carrying their own dead offspring, though scientists aren't sure the reasons. Why did the capuchin males do it? There were no signs of deliberate aggression toward the babies and they weren't eaten, ruling out predation. 'We've all spent hours racking our brains why they would do this,' said Goldsborough. The first baby-snatcher may have had a confused 'caring motivation', or parental instinct, because he showed gentleness interacting with the infants, she said. Then four other males copied his actions. The researchers said they don't believe the capuchins harmed the babies on purpose. So far, only one group of capuchins has been known to kidnap. The research shows the 'remarkable behavioural variation across social groups of the same species', said Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France, who was not involved in the study.
National Geographic
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
These capuchins are abducting babies from howler monkeys—for fun?
A young male nicknamed Joker was probably the first to start carrying a howler monkey baby on his back for days on end. Then a group of other young males started to copy him. Here a white-faced capuchin monkey perches on a tree branch in Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. A group from the same genus has been observed with stolen howler monkey babies on a small island off the coast of Panama. Photograph By Eric Kruszewski, Nat Geo Image Collection 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 bizarre new trend 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. Island life may bore capuchins 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.'
