Latest news with #Goldsborough
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.
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
Monkeys are kidnapping babies of another species on a Panamanian island, perplexing scientists
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. At first, behavioral ecologist Zoë Goldsborough thought the small figure seen on the back of a capuchin monkey in her camera trap footage was just a baby capuchin. But something, she said, seemed off. A closer look revealed the figure's unexpected coloration. She quickly sent a screenshot to her research collaborators. They were perplexed. 'I realized that it was really something that we hadn't seen before,' Goldsborough said. Further observation of the video and cross-checking among researchers revealed that the small figure was actually a monkey of a different species — a baby howler. 'I was shocked,' Goldsborough said. As Goldsborough searched through the rest of her footage, she noticed the same adult monkey — a white-faced capuchin nicknamed 'Joker' for the scar on his mouth — carrying a baby howler monkey in other clips, too. Then, she noticed other male capuchins, known scientifically as Cebus capucinus imitator, doing the same thing. But why? Using 15 months of camera-trap footage from their research site on Jicarón Island, a small island 55 kilometers (34 miles) off the coast of Panama and part of Coiba National Park, Goldsborough's collaborators from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, University of Konstanz, and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, among others, studied the odd behavior to find an answer. They found that, starting with Joker, four subadult and juvenile male capuchin monkeys had abducted at least 11 infant howler monkeys between January 2022 and March 2023. With no evidence of the capuchins eating, caring for or playing with the infants, the study authors suspect the kidnapping behavior is a kind of 'cultural fad' — and potentially a symptom of the monkeys' unique conditions in the ecosystem of Jicarón. They reported their initial findings Monday in the journal Current Biology. Still, many questions remain. And unraveling the mystery could be crucial, the researchers said. The howler population on Jicarón is an endangered subspecies of mantled howler monkeys, Alouatta palliata coibensis, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a global assessment of species' vulnerability to extinction. Additionally, howler monkey moms give birth only once every two years, on average. Examining the capuchin kidnapper case 'was kind of like a roller coaster where we kept having different interpretations, and then we would find something that proved that wrong,' said Goldsborough, the study's lead author and a doctoral student with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and University of Konstanz. Jicarón Island is uninhabited by humans. With no electricity and a rocky terrain, scientists have to haul their gear and other materials to the island with boats when the tides are right, making in-person observations of the skittish capuchin monkeys difficult. That's why they use camera traps: hidden, motion-triggered cameras that capture photos and videos of the ground-dwelling capuchins. But there's a major limitation to their work: You don't know what you can't see, and the camera traps don't capture what's happening in the treetops, where howler monkeys live. So, the study team couldn't definitively confirm how, when, or why capuchins abducted the babies. At first, the researchers thought it was a rare, one-time case of adoption. Monkeys have been known to 'adopt' abandoned infants of the same or other species. But Joker wasn't caring for the howlers — he was just carrying them on his back, with no clear benefit to himself, until the infants eventually perished of starvation without access to breast milk. It's an odd behavior for male primates, said Pedro Dias, a primatologist at Veracruzana University in Mexico who studies Mexico's mantled howler monkeys and was not involved in the research. In primatology, it's fairly common to find females adopting or abducting infants to then care for them as a maternal instinct, he said. But on Jicarón, the males were not providing maternal care. When behavioral ecologist Corinna Most first read about the Jicarón monkey kidnappings, she suspected something else was going on. 'They're probably eating these babies,' said Most, an adjunct associate professor at Iowa State University who studies baboons, of her initial thoughts. Abduction for predation isn't uncommon in the animal world, added Most, who was not involved with the research. But as she learned more about the team's observations, she was surprised to find that wasn't happening in this case, either. Instead, the capuchins toted around the baby howlers for days with few interactions — no play, minimal aggression and little interest. Why they would exert the energy to steal babies is largely unclear, said study coauthor Brendan Barrett, a behavioral ecologist and Goldsborough's adviser. However, it's important to note that these island capuchins evolved in a different environment from their mainland relatives, explained Barrett. Capuchins are 'destructive, explorative agents of chaos,' he said. Even on the mainland, they rip things apart, hit wasp nests, wrestle with each other, harass other species and poke around just to see what happens. On an island without predators, 'that makes it less risky to do stupid things,' Barrett said. Island capuchins can also spread out since they don't need strength in numbers for protection, allowing them to explore. With this relative safety and freedom, Jicarón's capuchin monkeys might be a bit bored, the researchers proposed. Boredom, it turns out, could be a key driver of innovation — particularly on islands, and particularly among younger individuals of a species. This idea is the focus of Goldsborough's thesis research on Jicarón and Coiba's capuchins, the only monkey populations in these areas that have been observed using stones as tools to crack nuts. Consistent with the abductions, it's only the males who use tools on Jicarón, which remains a mystery to the researchers. 'We know that cultural innovation, in several cases, is linked to the youngest and not the oldest,' Dias said. For example, evidence of potato-washing behavior in macaques on Japan's Koshima Island was first observed in a young female nicknamed Imo. There are a few possible reasons for this, Dias explained. Adolescence is a time during which primates are independent from their mothers, when they start to forage and explore on their own. At that stage the monkeys also aren't fully integrated into their group's society yet. Over-imitation — a tendency in human children to imitate the behavior of others even if they don't understand it — could possibly be at play as well, Most said. This over-imitation isn't found in other animals, Most emphasized, but, 'I almost feel like this is what these other capuchins are doing,' perhaps as a way to socially bond with Joker, she observed. Most said she has usually thought that necessity, rather than free time, is the mother of invention in nature. But 'this paper makes a good case for (the idea that) maybe sometimes animals that are really smart, like capuchins, just get bored,' she noted. People and other primates famously share a certain level of intelligence defined by tool usage and other metrics, but some shared traits could be less desirable, Goldsborough said. 'One of the ways we are different from many animals is that we have many of these sort of arbitrary, nearly functionless cultural traditions that really harm other animals,' she added. As a kid growing up in the northeastern United States, Barrett said he used to catch frogs and lightning bugs in mason jars while exploring the outdoors. While he never meant to hurt them, he knows those activities usually aren't pleasant for the animal. It's possible that the capuchins' kidnapping behavior is similarly arbitrary — if not moderately entertaining for them. Barrett and Goldsborough said they hope this new behavior fades away, much like fads among humans come and go. Or perhaps the howler monkeys will catch onto what's happening and adapt their behavior to better protect their babies, Goldsborough added. 'It kind of is like a mirror that reflects upon ourselves,' Barrett said, 'of us seemingly doing things to other species that can harm them and seem atrocious that have no real purpose.'
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
17-02-2025
- Yahoo
He blamed her for missing out on £167k lottery win... his reaction has landed him in jail for years
A woman 'feared for her life' as her thug boyfriend attacked her after blaming her for missing out on a Postcode Lottery win. Neighbours of the victim scooped £167,000 each in a jackpot win, a court heard. But the woman was devastated to discover she was still registered at her old address, so she won nothing. Her partner, Lee Goldsborough, then turned violent over the matter. Having abused her and called her names, the 50-year-old began to squeeze and twist the woman's neck, leaving her fearful she would be killed. Prosecuting, Nicholas Lane told Newcastle Crown Court that the pair met on a night out in December 2023, Chronicle Live reports. READ MORE: Full list of stores closing before end of February including New Look and Dobbies - and one in Greater Manchester READ MORE: ITV Emmerdale's Paddy Kirk actor's real life off-screen wife is a very familiar face Mr Lane said 'things changed' in February last year when Goldborough kicked the woman in the buttocks during a shopping trip because he said she was 'slow'. The next attack followed the revelation that she had just missed out on the lottery win. Mr Lane said: "She would have won £167,000 but unfortunately hadn't informed the Postcode Lottery of her new address and was still registered as living at her previous address, meaning she didn't win anything. Understandably, she states she was devastated. However, instead of being sympathetic, he became angry and verbally abusive towards her, calling her stupid." The court heard when they met in the pub later that evening and Goldsborough was verbally abusive to the point other customers intervened. It was after they left the bar that he became violent in the taxi home. Mr Lane said: "He punched her to the face, pulled her hair and squeezed her neck in a hold, twisting it to the side with such force she believed he as trying to break her neck. She was in considerable pain and terrified." Goldsborough later made a joke about the violence, that left her face bruised and said 'that's what make-up is for'. About a week after the attack Goldsborough punched her face again, after she mentioned an ex-partner of his. He also caused damage in her home by ripping the stairway banister completely off the wall and broke a large mirror. The woman said in an impact statement: "I am terrified of Goldsborough, I really believe he could kill me and genuinely feared for my life when he tried to snap my neck. "I'm a shadow of the person I was before I met him." Goldsborough, of Cedar Road, Fenham, Newcastle, has a record for serious violence and received indefinite imprisonment for public protection (IPP) in 2006. Tony Davis, defending, said the public protection jail term had a 'devastating impact' on Goldsborough and his ability to manage the emotional demands of a normal relationship. Goldsborough admitted intentional strangulation, assault and criminal damage charges. Sentencing him to four years in prison, Recorder Simon Goldberg KC told him: "She thought she was going to die." Mr Davis said after being recalled on that sentence, Goldsborough will have to serve the jail term imposed for the new offences, followed by a further 12 months before he can apply for parole again.
