Stories tagged rhesus monkeys
A Rhesus monkey: Full of hate, a monkey's most powerful emotion. (phot courtesy of OskarN on flickr.com)A week ago Sunday, the Deputy Mayor of New Delhi, India, died as a result of being attacked by monkeys.
Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was attacked by Rhesus Macaque monkeys on the balcony of his own home. Overwhelmed by the monkey pack, Bajwa fell from the balcony, and sustained severe head injuries upon impact with the ground.
Rhesus Macaques generally live in “troops” of about 20 individuals (a group this size is technically referred to as “pretty scary”), but troops have been known to be as large as 180 individuals (technically “super scary”). In addition to small but thriving colonies in Florida and South Carolina Rhesus monkeys can be found across southern Asia from Afghanistan to China. They are particularly populous in cities like New Delhi, where they have overrun many public buildings and neighborhoods. Coincidentally, these locations have recently been added to my list of places I don’t want to live: Florida; South Carolina; New Delhi all of southern Asia.
Part of the problem in New Delhi is that some devout Hindus consider the Macaques to be manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman, and encourage their occupation of public places by feeding them peanuts and bananas. Unafraid of humans, even Deputy Mayors, the Macaques will sometimes bite or steal food from people.
Rhesus Macaques are also extensively used as biological and medical test subjects, leading some (me) to theorize that this may have been a misguided revenge killing. What’s more, Macaques have accumulated significant space travel experience (NASA launched a bunch in the 50s and 60s, and Russia sent one into space as recently as 1997), and have even had their genes spliced with those of a jellyfish, making them powerful and unpredictable potential foes to humanity.
In an effort to deal with the Rhesus situation, Delhi authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs, “a larger and fiercer kind of monkey,” to scare away or catch the Macaques. Nothing stops a dangerous monkey problem like “larger and fiercer” monkeys.
Speaking of deadly arms races, last week was also the 45th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Will humanity never learn?
Tags : 
Rhesus monkeys with babies: Photo by jasmic at FlickrNew research at the University of Chicago shows that female rhesus macaques (also called rhesus monkeys) use special vocalizations when interacting with infants, in much the same way humans use motherese with human babies.
“Motherese is a high pitched and musical form of speech, which may be biological in origin,” said Dario Maestripieri, researcher and Associate Professor in Comparative Human Development. “The acoustic structure of particular monkey vocalizations called girneys may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of human motherese, or baby talk, allows adults to visually or socially engage with infants.”
In their study they noted that when a baby rhesus strayed away from its mother, the other female members would look at the baby and make vocalizations.
"Adult females become highly aroused while observing the infants of other group members," said Jessica Whitham, the study’s lead author and a recent Ph.D. graduate at U of C.
The “baby-talk” seems to draw the infant monkeys’ attention and encourage their behavior, and at the same time increase the social acceptance of the mother and her interaction with other females who have babies.
Monkey vocalizations can either carry information, such as warnings of approaching threats, or carry no information and just be noises from which the recipient can draw inferences. A good example would be the sound of a human sneeze. It can be inferred by us as being linked to the common cold, although it didn’t develop through evolution to send that information.
The Maestripieri team’s article entitled “Intended Receivers and Functional Significance of Grunt and Girney Vocalizations in Free-Ranging Rhesus Macaques” appears in the current issue of the journal Ethology, and shows that the grunts and girneys of the rhesus monkeys studied were not meant to send specific information, but rather were used to draw the attention of other individuals or to change their emotional states. The vocalizations to infants appear to not only grab the infant’s attention, but also infer that they only want to play with the infant, as well as sooth any concerns the mother may have that their babies were in danger.
The researchers also noted that the grunts and girneys were sometimes followed by an approach and grooming of the mothers.
Oddly, the team discovered that the rhesus mothers didn’t direct girneys or grunts toward their own infants, probably because they were used to them and were excited at the prospect of seeing a new infant in their midst.
LINKS
”Ethology” definition
Biology-blog.com story
World Science website story
