Capuchinhuizen generally do not hang around with their neighbors, the Howler -monkeys, on Jicarón Island for Panama. So the image of a baby cruila juice that clings to the back of a capuchin with a white face confused Zoë Goldborough, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany. She came across it in 2022 while searching images of external cameras on the island.
Eventually she and her colleagues came to a surprising conclusion that she described on Monday In the journal Biology. Young male capuchins on that island, they say, have kidnapped Babies Babies on different occasions and worn for days. The babies often died of dehydration or hunger.
“Looking at the images and not knowing what was going to happen, it seemed a bit like a horror film that was written,” said Brendan Barrett, an evolutionary anthropologist at the institute and the dissertation adviser of Mrs. Goldborough. Both usually focus on Hooded Stone Tool UseNot on monkey juices and murder of children, and are also affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
From January 2022 to July 2023, Researchers documented 11 different Howler Monkey Babies are worn by five young male Capuchins. The trend seems to have been set by Joker, a male capuchin that is the nickname because of a small scar on the side of his mouth. Other youth capucins seem to have simulated him months later.
Neither the study authors nor external experts who have assessed the research believe that the abductors are planning to harm the babies. Dr. Barrett compared the capuchins with children who catch lightning bugs in pots and do not release them before the insects die in captivity.
Nevertheless, hoods were observed with aggression and destructivity to other species, and it has been shown that they harass Howler monkeys in other locations. Susan Perry, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study, described witnesses of the animals that tortured Coati puppies before they live in Costa Rica. She once observed a capuchin group who threw Kinkajou around a baby that they had caught as if it were a ball.
Howler monkeys, on the other hand, are “the cows of the trees,” said Meg Cross, also an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute and a co-author of the study. They spend a lot of their time to actually digest leaves when they do not perform them Bass-heavy seduction.
In images that researchers gathered in Panama, Joker is seen through his day with a brown monkeybaby on his stomach or back, not unlike a supermarket shopper who wears a Chihuahua in her bag. He and the other Capuchins did not play with the infants they purified – at least not on camera.
Other scenes are more disturbing. In one video a group of hoods prevents a baby Howler Monkey not escaping while adult cry forces are calling.
Remote images have limitations. Researchers could not follow the monkeys on the scene of the crime, nor could they find out if babies survived. But scientists saw that four of the babies died, and they suspect that most of the rest did that, because they had no access to their mothers’ milk.
Dr. Barrett and Dr. Cross was one of the first to document the use of stone tools under this capuchin population, and they continuously followed the group Since 2017. These capuchins have discovered how they can use stones to crack open molluscs, snails and other edible delicacies that have hard shells.
The scientists say that it might not be a coincidence that monkeys on a remote island that had demonstrated Simians of other species earlier proof of tool use. While the baby stealing and wearing that the monkeys appear, seems disturbing, it is also a form of cultural innovation.
The authors of the study even go so far that they suggest that the monkeys can invent new behavior and rituals because they are bored. It is only on Jicarón, as well as the neighboring island of Coiba, which uses this type of tool. In both places it has no predators to fear and enough food.
“They may just have a lot of time in their hands,” said Dr. Cross.
Further observations would be needed to document evidence of boredom, said Charlotte Burn, a specialist in animal welfare and behavior at the Royal Veterinary College in London who was not involved in the study.
The team intends to study extra camera images for instructions about what this behavior appeals. Scientists also want to understand the social status of Joker in the Hoodchin Group before he started this trend.
Dr. Burn agreed that it would be important to know whether the Howler raids the Joker helped when a fame in his mess, and whether loneliness could have brought him to his strange behavior.
“If he is an outcast – you know, he was not cared for by the others and so – then it is more a mystery why the others copy,” said Dr. Burn. “Maybe they also miss what he missed.”
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