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Initially, the behavioral ecologist Zoë Goldsborough thought that a small figure saw the capeucin at the end of the monkey at the footage of the camera’s cattle was only a baby hood. But something, she said, looked turned off. A closer look revealed the unexpected color of the figure. She quickly sent a screenshot for her research collaborators. They were perplexed.
“I realized that this was something we hadn’t seen yet,” said Goldsborough.
Further observation of the video and the cross-inspection of the researchers revealed that a small figure was actually a different type of skull monkey.
“I was shocked,” said Goldsborough.
When Goldsborough was looking for the rest of the footage, she noticed the same adult monkey-white capuchin, nicknamed Joker for a scar on the mouth-baby howler monkey and other clips. She then noticed other male hoods, scientifically known as Cebus Capucinus imitator, doing the same. But why?
Using a 15 -month camera fragile footage from their research location on Jicarón Island, a small island 55 kilometers (34 miles) off the shores of Panama and part of Coiba National Park, Goldsborough’s collaborators from Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz University, behavior to find the answer.
They found that, starting with Joker, four superstition and minor men in monkeys from 2022. January – 2023 March Jicarón. On Monday, they reported their original conclusions in Current Biology.
Still, there are many questions left. And rejection of the mystery can be very important, the researchers said. Based on the list of IUCN Red Species, in the universal vulnerability of species, the list of “IUCN Red Types” is an endangered Howler Howler monkey population Alouatta Palata Coibensis. In addition, the Howler Monkey Moms gives birth to average only once every two years.
Rising hypotheses
After examining the case of the Capuchin kidnapper, “were like a roller coaster where we were increasingly interpreted, and then we would find what proved that it was wrong,” said Goldsborough, the main study author and doctoral student with the Max Planck’s Animal Behavior Institute and Constanz University.
Jicarón Island does not live people. In addition to electricity and rocky terrain, scientists have to transport their tools and other materials to the island with boats when the floods are correct, making it difficult to observe how difficult it is to observe the studded hoody monkeys. That is why they use camera traps: hidden, motion -induced cameras that capture photos and videos of cappuchins living on the ground.
However, there is a big limit for their work: you don’t know what you don’t see, and the camera trap does not capture what is happening at the tops of the trees where Howler Monkeys lives. So the research team could not definitively confirm how, when, when, and why cappuchins kidnapped babies.
Initially, the researchers thought it was a rare, one -off case of adoption. The monkeys were known to “accept” abandoned babies of the same or other types. However, the Joker did not care about the masks – he just carried them on his back, without clear benefits to himself until the babies were eventually killed, without having to use breast milk.
It seemed that male members had few interactions with kidnapped baby tags. – Brendan Barrett/Max Planck’s Animal Behavior Institute
This is a strange behavior of men’s primates, said Pedro Dias, the primary dose of the University of Mexican Veracruzana, which investigates Mexican polite monkeys and did not participate in research. In primatology, it is quite common for women to accept or speed up babies to take care of them in their mother’s instinct, he said. However, Jicarón men did not provide mother care.
When behavioral ecologist Corinna first read about the kidnapping of Jicarón monkeys, she suspected something else was happening. “They are probably eating these babies,” said most of the Ayova State University, an additional associate professor who is studying Babujs about their original thoughts.
The animal world is not unusual for predators, added to most who were not related to research. But after learning more about the team’s observations, she was surprised and learned that it didn’t happen either.
Instead, the hoods came together for a few days around baby masks with a few interactions – no game, minimal aggression and little interest. Why they use energy to steal babies is unclear, said the research co -author Brendan Barrett, an ecologist of behavior and advisor to Goldsborough.
However, it is important to note that these island hoods have evolved in another environment than relatives of their continent, Barrett explained. Capuchins are “destructive, exploring chaos agents,” he said. Even on the continent, they opened things, struck a wasp nest, struggling with each other, harassing other species, and just seeing what would happen.
On the island without predators, “it does less risky to do stupid things,” Barrett said. The island’s capuchins can also be distributed as they do not require strength to protect them by allowing them to be explored.
With this relative security and freedom, Jicarón Capuchin monkeys can be a bit boring, suggested by the researchers.
The influence of boredom
It turns out that boredom can be the main engine of innovation, especially on the islands, especially among younger species. This idea is the focus of the Goldsborough thesis of Jicarón and Coiba Kapuchins, the only monkey populations in these areas that were observed using stones as tools for nuts. Based on kidnappings, only males who use Jicarón tools remain, and researchers remain a mystery.
“We know that cultural innovations in several cases are related to the youngest, not the oldest,” Dias said.
For example, evidence of the behavior of potato washing in Macaques on Japanese Koshima Island for the first time was noticed by a young woman, nicknamed Tjo.
These are some of the possible reasons, explained. Adolescence is the time during which primates are independent of their mothers as they begin to remove and explore independently. At that stage, monkeys are also not yet fully integrated into their group society.
Excessive imitation-human children’s propensity to imitate the behavior of others, even if they do not understand it-can also be played, most.
Researchers say that the actions of monkey monkeys can be arbitrary behavior caused by boredom. – Brendan Barrett/Max Planck’s Animal Behavior Institute
This over-imitation is not found in other animals, the most emphasized, but “I almost feel what these other cappuits do”, perhaps as a way to socially associate with the Joker, she wondered.
Many claimed that she usually thought that necessity, not leisure, was the mother of the nature invention. But “this document is a good case (idea) maybe sometimes for animals that are really smart, like cappuchine, just boring,” she noted.
People and other primates have a loud intellectual level defined by using tools and other metrics, but some common features may be less desirable, said Goldsborough.
“One way we are different from many animals is that we have many such arbitrary, almost functional cultural traditions that really harm other animals,” she added.
As a child growing up in the northeastern US, Barrett said he had been catching frogs and lightning mistakes in Mason jars while exploring. Although he never intended to hurt them, he knows that this activity is usually not pleasant to the animal.
Capuchin abduction behavior may be similar arbitrary – if not moderately cheerful. Barrett and Goldsborough said they expect this new behavior to disappear, much like people will come and leave. Or maybe Howler Monkeys will get to what is going on and will apply their behavior to better protect their babies, Goldsborough added.
“It’s like a mirror that reflects itself,” Barrett said, “From us, we seem to deal with other species that can hurt and look brutal, who have no real purpose.”
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