A young male curly book called the Joker may just be the world’s first primate influencer. However, the trend he started (belongs to babies belonging to a single species) was a fatal consequence.
The Joker is one of many white-headed capsules that live on the island of Gikaron on the coast of Panama. Researchers have been using cameras to observe the behavior of these round-headed, chunky monkeys, when in 2022 some unusual people caught the attention of Zoëgoldsborough, a PhD researcher at the Max Planck Institute, and a research assistant at the Institute of Tropical Studies at the Smithsonian College in Panama.
She was browsing the camera trap shot when she found a male capuchin monkey with a little monkey on her back. It’s already an unusual sight – rich primates almost always carry young people’s primates. But after careful inspection, it even became strange.
“I really quickly saw that the color was completely wrong,” Goldsboro said to Gizmodo. “The capuchin’s fur and light-colored face, this [baby] Lighter fur, face. ”
She explained that the only other primate on the island is the Holler monkey, and the baby’s color matches the species. “So it’s soon clear that this can only be a roaring monkey, but it makes no sense.”
Goldsborough was inspired by one sighting statement From the Max Planck Institute. She found four different endings, a male, her name is clown, and her baby is called monkey.
“With everything we found, we got more answers, but there are more questions,” Goldsborough said.
At first, she and her colleagues thought the behavior might be a form of adoption—when the animal acts as a parent to the infant of another species. According to the Max Planck Institute, this is relatively common among primates, but is conducted almost by women, who presumably are doing it to practice caring for young people. So, what motivates the clown (male) to kidnap these babies’ ll.
New questions arose before Goldsborough and her colleagues began answering the question. Five months after the Joker began doing this, they found videos and images of four other young male tail rolls with baby lings. They are imitating him – it’s “the monkey sees, the monkey does” the real world.
Researchers’ research, publishing Monday, in the journal Current Biology, details how the trend clown and his four followers carried 11 different how babies over a 15-month period. When capuchin monkeys were in business, the baby clutched their backs or belly tightly and stayed together for 9 days at a time.
Goldsborough said that, except for occasional annoyance, capuchin monkeys are gentle to their strange passengers, especially coaches when babies try to do not have care. “He seems to be really interested in having these babies and carrying them for a long time,” she said.
However, because these males are unable to produce milk, the baby performs poorly with the adopted father. The researchers saw four babies die from obvious malnutrition and suspected that the others died, too. In three cases, the capuchin monkey continued to carry dead babies the next day.
Based on their findings, the researchers determined that this was a case of interspecies kidnapping, not adoption. It is not clear why capuchin monkeys can catch this trend, as primates rarely kidnap young people from other species, but it is not uncommon for one person’s behavior to be transmitted through social learning to other members of other populations.
As for why the Joker initiated this behavior in the first place, Goldsborough said there were some possible motivations. She explained that his gentle interaction with the baby whom he called showed that he might have some kind of caring motivation. “I think there’s a possibility that he’s a little weird, or that he’s a little lonely to some extent,” she said.
To take root in his behavior, Goldsborough wants to learn more about his social status. Determining whether the clown is a leader or a loner can further understand how social learning manifests itself in a primate population, she said.
