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Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Book Review: A Primate's Memoirs - A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons


“I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla…  You make compromises in life; not every kid can grow up to become president or a baseball star or a mountain gorilla.  So I made plans to join the baboon troop.”
And with that introduction setting the pace, you get your welcome into the life of Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor who, true to his word, went off to become a baboon.  Fascinated by the science of how group living effects our health, Sapolsky traveled to Kenya and set up shop among a troop of baboons, who he studied in depth, getting to know them as individuals and immersing himself in their comings and goings.   He shares his experiences in A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons.
By the time that Sapolsky got his start in Kenya, Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas had already been in the field for years with their different great ape species, and we as humans were already coming to terms – willingly or otherwise – with just how close we are behaviorally to our closest relatives.  The baboon troop shadowed by Sapolsky – cheekily named after Old Testament patriarchs – is full of societal drama, with constant upheavals and plotting and back-stabbing and then surprising moments of altruism.  It’s easier to think of the author as an anthropologist or a visiting diplomat than it is a biologist.  His research animals come across more as people than impersonal study subjects, which makes the writing that much more humorous and poignant – and that much more painful when something goes wrong.
Sapolsky doesn’t limit his musings to the lives of baboons.  He recounts all sorts of experiences he’s had as an eye witness to a changing East Africa, from a failed coup in Kenya to the struggle to unseat Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.  He fills his stories with a colorful cast of characters, from a Leonardo-like genius of a camp assistant who dazzles him with his brilliant camp innovations to a surly hyena biologist who warms up with the chance to share his favorite animals to Maasai warriors, struggling to figure out where they fit in a changing world.  For an American or European, writing about your experiences in Africa can always be a little tricky – you are, of course, writing from a position of privilege and there is always a risk that some patriarchal colonialism will seep into your story.  Sapolsky does a better job than most – his narrative introduces us to a host of Kenyan characters from different cultures who he writes of as individuals with unique lives and stories and personalities, not as some monolithic “African” culture as many writers in his shoes do.
Science, even when written for a popular audience, can be a difficult pill for some readers to swallow.  Fortunately, Robert Sapolsky does a pretty good job of dousing that pill with chocolate.  He is genuinely one of the funniest nonfiction writers I’ve ever read.  His description of his horrified discovery that elephants have breasts – human-like breasts, not udders like cows – had me in stitches;  he is convinced that he’s gone so bush-crazed that he’s actually hallucinating boobs on elephants.  You’ll be having so much fun that you’ll be oblivious to how much – biology, neuroscience, anthropology, history – that you are soaking up with it.
Sapolsky’s entire book is infused with how much he cares – about the science, about the friends that he made studying in Africa, and above all, about the baboons he studied.  It’s almost impossible for the reader not to be infected with that same level of caring – I first read this book twenty years ago, and there are still passages in it which make me tear up when I read them.   By the end of the book, I’m willing to bet that you’ll care to.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Sporcle Quiz: Sporcle at the Zoo - Lemurs


The red-ruffed lemur and the Coquerel's sifaka are only two of the fascinating lemur species that you might see at your local zoo.  Play this quiz and see how much you know about them and some of their relatives!


Friday, April 26, 2019

Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project

With deforestation as the major threat – supplemented by diseases, bush meat hunting, and illegal capture for the pet trade – the future looks rather bleak for many primates, including our closest relatives, the great apes.  Well, for most of them.  There is one ape – asides humans – which has actually been increasing in numbers.  That ape is the mountain gorilla.
One of the biggest assets that the world’s biggest primates enjoy is the health care provided by the Gorilla Doctors of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.  The project was initiated in the mid 1980s by famed researcher Dian Fossey.  Fossey, who lost her life in her war against poaching, was very concerned by the numbers of gorillas she was observing with illnesses and injuries, some of them caused by the snares set out by poachers.
Fossey is gone, but the project lives on in a dozen or so veterinarians, who provide medical care for the gorillas in the field.  They collect data on the animals, which are habituated to allow routine visual health checks – not as hands on as they would be with zoo gorillas which are trained to assist in veterinary care, but far more so than would be possible for most wild apes.  Medication and treatment are provided as needed.  Orphans are rescued from the pet trade and maintained in semi-wild conditions.  Other local species, such as bats and rodents, are monitored for diseases which have the potential to negatively impact both gorillas and humans.
Perhaps most importantly, the MGVP recognizes that gorilla conservation is at the heart of maintaining gorilla health.  One hundred or two hundred years ago, no one was off in the bush giving gorillas physicals and the apes were doing fine.  Now, however, with their numbers and range reduced so much by human activity, any additional loss of animals can threaten the population.  Humans caused the problem, the thinking goes, so humans have an obligation to help remedy it.
It seems to be working.  Again, while gorilla populations elsewhere in Africa are declining – as are numbers of chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans – mountain gorillas are on the rise.  I attribute that in part to this project, and in part due to the major economic incentive that the countries that mountain gorillas are home to have in protecting the animals for ecotourism.
No zoos currently house mountain gorillas, but many have played a major role in the project.  A biobank of gorilla samples is maintained at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, which for twenty years led the project (it is now based out of UC Davis Wildlife Health Center).  I’m sure Fossey – who had a complicated love/hate relationship with zoos – would be pleased to see the contributions that they are making towards saving the species.
More importantly, I think she would be pleased if she were able to take a quick peek at the project’s website and scroll through the pictures of the veterinary staff.  The vast majority of the faces on the screen are African, representing vets from Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  After years of fighting in the field, Fossey could rest easily knowing that the future of mountain gorillas in Central Africa is looking brighter due to the committed efforts of so many local leaders.


Thursday, April 25, 2019

High Society at the Zoo

Primates – be they apes, monkeys, or lemurs – are easily among the most popular of zoo animals.  They also pose some of the greatest challenges to a zookeeper.  Part of it is that they are very intelligent and dexterous and agile, all of which lends to them being able to get into all sorts of trouble.  The aspect of their biology which has always caused me the most anxiety, however, is their social nature.
With few exceptions, primates are highly social beings.  Even some species which were previously thought to be very solitary, such as orangutans, are now suspected of being far more sociable than we thought before.  Even the less social species, when placed in a controlled environment with abundant food and resources, tend to loosen up and become friendlier.  For other species, such as mandrill, groups numbering in the hundreds have been reported in the wild.  When you hear things like that, seeing the dozens of macaques in Monkey Jungle’s crab-eating macaque colony makes a lot of sense, to the point where you start to wish more zoos would manage their monkeys on that scale.
About that…
“Social” does not, unfortunately, always equal “peaceable.”  Bigger troops lead to bigger conflicts, which is less of a problem in the wild where monkeys and apes can either get away from each other by leaving the group… or just die (which goes against the ethos of the zookeepers).  Managing primates in a zoo isn’t just about managing individuals – it’s about keeping on top of the whole soap opera drama of the group and knowing who is standing where in relation to who.  That is often established with fighting and chasing and other, subtler bullying.  When carrying for primates at one zoo, it seemed that every day the daily report was just a laundry list of who did what to who.   When I would come back from my days off, I felt like a kindergarten teacher who was getting a report from her exasperated substitute, who was full of gossip of how badly the kids had been misbehaving over the last few days.
There isn’t just drama within a group, there’s drama between groups.  Gibbons and howler monkeys spend lots of time yelling at each other (or at other groups) to establish territories.  It could be cool to have two exhibits of a species, located at either end of a zoo, able to hear but not see each other.  Each morning, the gibbons could hoot and holler at each other, confirming that everyone is going to stay in their own territory.  When the Bronx Zoo opened its massive Ethiopian Highlands, home to baboon-like geladas and other species, the thought was that it would originally house two troops of the large African primates.  For a while, it did, following careful introductions, keeping to separate territories.  Then, to the surprise of zoo staff, some geladas from Troop “A” and Troop “B” got together and formed Troop “C,” establishing their own territory.
 It can be challenging to do anything that benefits everyone equally.  Suppose you provide your chimpanzees with some awesome enrichment – the dominant animals may love it, and therefore monopolize it.  The bottom-ranking chimps, seeing something that they would love to play with but can’t use for fear of the big guys, may become very stressed.   Whatever resources you provide – food, toys, sleeping sites – you have to keep in mind that no one is going to be inclined to share evenly. 
It sometimes seems like the only thing worse than being in a social primate setting, is putting one alone.
I’ve met some primates, even of the most social species, who – as individuals – just hated everyone and liked to be alone.  That’s fair enough – some people hate everyone and want to be left alone.  Other times, however, when a primate is isolated for any reason – say, it’s sick and has to go to the zoo’s hospital – it can become very upset, sometimes even refusing to eat and getting sick.  In these cases, a buddy might be brought with them to keep them company.   And this isn’t even counting the drama that removing an individual from a group can cause, especially if it’s a dominant animal and leaves a power vacuum.
Some zoos have even begun to rethink the concept of quarantining new primates into their zoos, provided they are coming from a known source, such as another accredited zoo, with a known health history.  The thinking is that whatever possible health benefit might be gleaned from thirty days of observation is outweighed by the stress of isolation.  Better to just get that animal integrated into its social unit as quickly as possible.
I’m going to leave you with one more anecdote that I really think sums up the primate social network better than anything.  A zoo had a large troop of baboons, when one of them – the dominant male – died unexpectedly.   There was no heir apparent, and the rest of the troop began fighting and squabbling and generally being awful to each other.  Unable to stop the fighting, the zoo had a novel solution – they added a pair of chimps to the enclosure.  Immediately, the baboons stopped.  They were all united in their suspicion and fear of these mysterious, alien new beings and spent all day cautiously watching the chimps.  All inter-troop conflict was put on hold.  Eventually, they all seemed to forget what the fuss was about.  The chimps were removed (no one was harmed during this experiment), a new leader assumed dominance of the baboon troop, and everyone lived happily ever after…
Until the next petty squabble…

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Species Fact Profile: Red Ruffed Lemur (Varecia rubra)

Red Ruffed Lemur
Varecia rubra (E. Geoffroy, 1812)


Range: Masoala Peninsula (Eastern Madagascar)
Habitat: Deciduous Tropical Forest
Diet: Fruit, Nectar, Pollen, Leaves, Seeds, Flowers
Social Grouping: Pairs, Small Matriarchal Groups (sometimes up to 32), Territorial
Reproduction: Polygamous.  Breed May through July, 1-6 (usually 2-3) young born after 102 day gestation.  Infants are less-developed at birth than many other lemurs, are kept in a nest instead of being carried around.  Father guards nest while mother forages.  Capable of leaving nest at 3-4 weeks old.  Sexually mature at 2 years old
Lifespan: 20-25 Years
Conservation Status: IUCN Critically Endangered, CITES Appendix I


  • Body length up to 53 centimeters. not including up to 60 centimeters of tail.  Weight 3.3-3.6 kilograms.  Females are slightly larger than males
  • Fur is rust red.  Faces, stomachs, tails, feet, and insides of the leg are black.  There is a white patch on the nape of the neck, sometimes additional white markings on the face
  • Very vocal, communicating with guttural yaps or loud, booming calls.  Use alarm calls to inform each other of presence of predators, keep in touch while foraging.  Also use calls to warn off other lemurs trespassing on their territory.  Also communicate with scent glands on rear
  • Along with the closely related black-and-white ruffed lemur, reproduction is different from other diurnal primates in having short gestation period, and large, less precocial litters which are kept in a nest.  High infant mortality, up to two-thirds of offspring die within first year
  • Primary natural predator is the fossa.  Also hunted for food by humans
  • Considered to be important pollinators for some plants - long, fox-like face collects pollen as the lemur puts its snout in flowers to drink nectar
  • Primary threats are habitat loss and hunting (large size makes them sought after by hunters).  Some trapping of live animals for illegal pet trade. Remaining wild population is concentrated in an area that is susceptible to hurricanes

Monday, April 22, 2019

The Chimpanzee Tragedy of Zoo Nebraska


I haven't read Zoo Nebraska yet, which is largely attributable to the fact that I only heard about it earlier today.  Upon reading about it, all I could think was... how typical.  Well-meaning but ill-informed person takes in a lot of exotic animals that he ends up being ill-suited to take care of.  Tragedy ensues.  The same could have been written about, say, the Zanesville massacre in Ohio, or several other fiascoes.  This one happens to focus on chimpanzees instead of big cats and bears.

The author of this work, Carson Vaughan, had an almost front seat view of the tragedy, which took place in his home town.  It seems to have taken its effect on him - in the attached interview, he mentions that he ended up thinking "zoos of kind aren't great."  I have a hard time believing that this was anything other than a reaction to growing up amidst the events of Zoo Nebraska.

That's one thing that stories like this always bring to the forefront, and which always drives me crazy.  No matter what great things zoos and aquariums do, whether for the conservation of species and ecosystems to the rescue of individual animals, we always seem to be held to the lowest common denominator.

In the case of Zoo Nebraska, that denominator seems pretty low indeed.

Photo courtesy of Carson Vaughan

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Zoo Joke: Transport Accident

A police officer arrives at the scene of a traffic accident - two zookeepers, transporting a monkey from one zoo to another.  By the time the officer arrives, both of the keepers - unconscious - are loaded into an ambulance.  Frustrated, the officer turns towards the monkey, perched on the hood of the car amid all the chaos.

"If only you could tell me what was going on," the officer quipped... at which, the monkey began to nod enthusiastically.

"What, you can understand me?"  The monkey nodded again. 

"Well, what happened?"  The monkey pantomimed taking a swig from a bottle.  "They were drinking?" the officer asked, horrified.  The monkey nodded.  Then, it mimed taking a puff from a cigarette.  "And smoking?" the officer asked.  The monkey nodded again.  Then, it made a series of obscene gestures.  "And... that?" the astonished officer asked.  Again, the monkey nodded.

"Okay," said the officer, scribbling into his notepad.  "So the keepers were drinking, smoking, and.. doing other things in the car.  And what were you doing during all of this?"

The monkey mimed handling a steering wheel.  "Driving."

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Don't Fence Me In

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage."
- To Althea, from Prison, Richard Lovelace

Monkey islands, like those described in the article shared yesterday, used to be almost ubiquitous in zoological facilities.  Some of them have been rather grandiose structures, such as the Japanese macaque habitat at the Central Park Zoo, which is in use to this day.  Others were sorry little affairs, little more than a like a cement truck unloaded in the middle of the zoo with a puddle of water formed around it.

My one experience with a monkey island has been the latter.  It was small, ugly, and a total pain in the butt to service.  This was in large part because there was no place to shift the monkeys to, so we had to wade ashore every day in the company of our troop, including the rather surly male.  Also, it made it a major challenge to catch up the monkeys to bring them in during inclement weather, as there was no room for a real shelter on the little island.  I was thrilled when we finally moved the troop to an exhibit on "the mainland."

It seemed that I was the only one.

Our visitors hated it.  It didn't matter that they literally had three to four times as much space as they had on the island.  It didn't seem to matter that they also had an indoor area to go into for shelter, which meant that they could stay outside for longer into the year.  It also meant that they could be worked with more safely, as we could shift them.  There were more climbing structures, better substrates (grass and mulch and dirt as opposed to just concrete), and all around better everything.  Visitors didn't care.  They insisted that the monkeys were sad.  Because they were in a cage.

Humans punish other humans, such as criminals, by putting them in cages.  They have for millennia.  As such, a prison cell is a nightmare for many people - one of the most common movie tropes is the man or woman who is falsely accused of a crime and sent to prison, only to escape somehow.  The thing is, monkeys and other animals don't have prisons.  A monkey doesn't think that it's in jail - it recognizes the bars as a barrier that it cannot pass through.  It does not have our obsessive fear of bars.

In fact, as far as a monkey is concerned, bars aren't as much a prison as they are a play thing.  A barred fence forms one massive climbing structure.  Put them on an island, and they are surrounded by lots of pretty air - which they can't climb on.  I personally like to see monkeys in open air enclosures - it's better for photography and observations.  Still, it's incredible to watch a monkey race up the walls of its enclosure, leap from the fencing onto a branch and continue to swing along without stopping.  For some primates, the less arboreal ones, fencing might not be such an enormous asset.  For arboreal ones, it can offer a lot of enrichment.

In situations where it is possible, it is great to have enclosures that are natural in appearance and still provide optimal habitat for the animals.  When we are forced to choose, however, we shouldn't sacrifice what is best for the animals to satisfy our own prejudices of what makes us feel better.

Monday, April 15, 2019

From the News: SF Zoo Monkey Island: Depression jobs and fun for humans, mixed bag for animals

This isn't so much a "From the News" - as it refers to events from 70 or 80 years ago - as it is a historical reminiscence of what was one a staple of every zoo collection - monkey islands.  These exhibits were once wildly popular with zoos.  For reasons that the author explores, they weren't necessarily the best for the animals, despite popular appearances.   While a few zoos still maintain monkey islands - some of them, I will admit, quite good - for the most part they have faded away, torn down and filled in.


For more than half a century, one of the most beloved attractions at the San Francisco Zoo was a man-made simian playground called Monkey Island. Visitors were enthralled by the antics of dozens of spider monkeys that scampered about the moated island, cavorted on trapezes, rang a bell, pushed each other into the water and lay in the sun.
Children were particularly enchanted by this endlessly entertaining mini-universe, which looked like a huge pile of enormous toy blocks dumped into a haphazard pile. As a visitor to the zoo in the 1960s, I always had to be dragged away from it by my parents.

Read the rest here.



Sunday, April 14, 2019

Flying Feces

There are a lot of stereotypes associated with monkeys... besides the whole "ooh, ooh, ahh, ahh" deal.    There's the belief that they all swing from their tails, which isn't true.  There's their famed tendency for getting in trouble, which is true enough.  There's the passion for bananas, which I've never found to be more or less true than any other piece of produce.

There are also some less than pleasant stereotypes.  Foremost among them is flinging feces.  That one I've found to be, alas, somewhat true, if perhaps a bit of an exaggeration.

Various species of monkeys and apes are reported to fling their feces at predators when angered or upset.  Chimps and gorillas are especially famed for it - some individuals are known to their keepers for having quite the arms.  They're also known for having great memories for those who are upsetting them... say, the zoo vet. 

Other monkeys, in the zoo and in the wild, are known to climb directly above a predator and then let their bowels loose.  This is the only first hand experience I've had with this less than harming aspect of primate behavior.  I was training a new keeper on our spider monkeys, which we were working free contact at that facility.  I went in with our troop as I had every day for the past two years, the only difference being that this time, I had the new girl in tow.  The monkeys... objected.

I'm not quite sure what it was about her that freaked the troop out.  Heaven knows they didn't act like that towards me on my first day.  Whatever it was, they hated it.  They climbed straight to the top of the enclosure, the troop male positioning himself right above us.  I might have noticed earlier if we hadn't been so distracted by all of the screaming (none of which was a cute "ooh, ooh, aah, ahh." 

Anyway, our big boy (who, I must stress, was not my old buddy Bubba), let loose a brownish-green stream of slop over the both of us - right in our hair.

I'd never been so impressed with a new keeper for coming back to the work the next day as I was with her.

A major part of the appeal for visitors is how human-like monkeys can seem.  That extends to their waste.  I personally find human feces to be far grosser than those of other animals.  Monkey poop, not surprisingly, grosses me out more than that of a lion or rhino. Thankfully, occurrences like that have proven super rare in my zoo career, and I've never had an incident of a visitor having poop thrown at them, knock on wood.  Monkeys are very popular zoo animals.  I doubt that most visitors would find them as charming if even a tiny percentage of visitors were leaving the zoo with some brown, smelly souvenir stains on their faces.

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Song of the Siamang

I've always wondered - who was it who decided that monkeys say "Ooo, ooo, aah, aah?"

I've never heard a monkey say anything like that.  I have heard about five hundred thousand visitors say it to the monkeys, hoping that it'll elicit some sort of response.

It actually shocks me how quiet primates tend to be.  When you consider how loud humans are, monkeys, apes, and lemurs are - on the whole - fairly silent animals.  When they do make sounds, they are often relatively soft and melodious.  The twitter of tamarins and marmosets is often likened to the calls of birds; visitors who walk by our tamarin exhibit in a hurry might hear them but not see them and assume that there are just birds in there.  Spider monkeys make a call like the soft whinnying of a horse.  The call of a lemur reminds me of the distant voice of a seagull. 

Which isn't to say that primates can't be loud as all heck when the need arises.  Let a stray dog sneak into our zoo and run past the monkeys.  You'll hear some screaming that will be haunting your nightmares years from now.  Our ruffed lemurs will sometimes holler for no apparent reason - I've rushed over, convinced that they must be killing each other, only to see them casually draped over branches, looking at me curiously as I race up to the fence, wondering what all the fuss is about.  And of course chimps can make a din when the mood strikes them.



It makes sense that primates have such great sets of pipes for when the need arises.  They are (mostly) social, and therefore need to stay in touch.  Most species live in the forests, where it might be hard to see one another because of leaves and branches, so vocalization works well for transmitting messages... such as territoriality.

The loudest of the primates are the howler monkeys of the Neotropics and the gibbons of Southeast Asia.  The call of the black howler monkey can be heard two miles away, three if there is nothing blocking it.  The call of the siamang, inflated by its throat pouch, can be heard two miles away as well - not quite as loud, but, to my ear, a bit more melodious.  Not that you'd want to hear it outside your bedroom every dawn... as was my experience when I lived on grounds at one zoo.

No matter how chatty primates at the zoo may be, it's best to respect them and their homes by not starting a din, nor contributing to one that is in progress.  Howler monkeys and gibbons don't whoop for fun - they do it to defend their territories.  You calling at them is, in reality, a challenge to their sovereignty, and it can be exhausting, intimidating for them to feel like they have to re-claim their territory every time an elementary school class comes up to the rails. 

If you are lucky enough to hear them vocalizing, sit back and enjoy it... and then be glad that it doesn't serve as your alarm clock every morning.



Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Species Fact Profile: Black Howler Monkey (Alouatta caraya)

Black Howler Monkey
Alouatta caraya (Humboldt, 1812)

Range: Central South America (eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina)
Habitat: Tropical Semi-Deciduous Forest
Diet: Leaves, Fruits, Buds, Flowers
Social Grouping: Family Groups of 5-8 (sometimes more)
Reproduction:  Promiscuous within group.  Gestation 7-12 months (younger females have longer gestation than older ones).  One offspring per birth, care for infant for one year prior to mating again.  Males mature at 2.5 years old, females at 3.  Adult males may help with young (young males can be dangerous to infants). Females may care for each other’s young
Lifespan: 15-20 Years
Conservation Status: IUCN Least Concern, CITES Appendix II



  • Body length 1.6 - 2.2 feet.  Tails of males are of similar length to the body.  Tails of the females are slightly longer.  Males weigh an average of 6.7 kilograms, females average 4.4 kilograms.  The muzzle is prominent (but less so than other howler monkeys), tail is prehensile with a hairless pad on the underside.  
  • Sexually dimorphic.  Males have black hair; females are yellow-brown or olive.  Infants are born with golden coat, changing as the monkey ages.  Black face is hairless with bushy eyebrows.   Some males may have patches of red or buff fur
  •  Enlarged hyoid and larynx houses vocal apparatus which allows howling.  Calls can be heard 1.8 miles away on land, 3 miles away over water.
  • Groups are roughly equal sex ratio (somewhat more females).  Territorial, but only defend area where they are at a given moment, all members howl in the morning to maintain distance between groups.  Also defecate and rub selves on branches to mark scent
  • Diet is poor in energy, monkeys spend up to 70% of the day resting while leaves ferment in enlarged cecum
  • Active by day, rarely come to the ground.  Avoid leaping, but can leap 3-4 yards in necessary.  Can swim if necessary
  • Obtain most of their water from their diet, but in dry times will come to the ground to drink or to feed on ground plants
  • Threatened by clear-cutting.  Hunted for meat and fur

Monday, April 8, 2019

The Kings of Swing

Bubba and I had our keeper talk showmanship down to an art.  In front of the visitors, I would present Bubba with a half a banana, held a few feet back from the fence of his enclosure.  Bubba, the dominant male of our troop of black spider monkeys, would hurry over and climb the fence until he was eye-level with me. 

He would reach out one long arm (the hand having four fingers and no thumb, as is typical of spider monkeys) and find that the treat was just out of reach.  Looking back, I find it fascinating that he always reached with his hand first, though the fruit was never within arm reach.  Then, to the delight of his audience, he would pivot and point his butt at me.  His long tail would shoot out and effortlessly grab the banana.  Seconds later, he would be munching away happily at it while the crowd oohed and aahed,

Watch almost any of the five-thousand Hollywood versions of Tarzan, or almost any jungle film, really, and you'll be sure to see monkeys hanging from their tails from the tree tops.  Most of these jungle movies are set in Africa.  In truth, however, only a relatively small number of monkey species can swing from their tails, and all of them are from the Americas.  Their ranks include the spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and to a lesser extent, the capuchins.  The tail is a nifty trick.  It serves as a fifth leg when climbing.  It can hold the animal's weight while it hangs from a branch, helping it reach food items.  It can be used to pick up objects.  Monkeys can even use it to demonstrate affection, holding tails like we might hold hands.

Such a hand-like limb is referred to as a prehensile tail.  Monkeys aren't the only animals to have it - opossums, chameleons, tamanduas (tree anteaters), binturongs, and an assortment of other species do as well.  Some animals have other prehensile body parts as well, as in, they can be used like we might use a hand.  A giraffe's tongue could be said to be prehensile, and really, an elephant's trunk is just a prehensile nose/upper lip.

Image result for prehensile tail graphic

Of course, just because a monkey doesn't have a prehensile tail doesn't mean that it can't get around in the trees - heck, apes don't have tails at all and they move around just fine.  Sifakas and some other lemurs move about my leaping from trunk to trunk.  Smaller primates such as tamarins and marmosets tend to run through the branches, scurrying like squirrels.  Gibbons and orangutans move by brachiation, swinging with their long arms like kids on the... well, on the monkey bars.  In orangutans it tends to be somewhat slow and ponderous.  With gibbons, it's like watching a blur.

Image result for brachiation

Even the most terrestrial of primates tend to be excellent climbers, and there are few things more incredible than watching an arboreal primate in its element, either in the zoo or in the wild, as it swings through the branches.  I've mentioned more than once about how we tend to gravitate towards monkeys and apes because they seem so human-like.  Whenever I watch a group of kids climb all over our zoo's playground, jumping and swinging with reckless abandon, I find myself remarking that the opposite could also be said - it's remarkable of just how monkey-like we can be.


Sunday, April 7, 2019

Little Fireface Project: The Un-Primates in Our Family Tree

When we talk about primates, we most often think of the monkeys and apes.  They are the members of our order that are the most unmistakably... human.  They typically live in communities and family groups.  They are diurnal, active, social, and inquisitive.  Some of them even use tools, just like we do.  It's hard not to watch a troop of chimpanzees, or gorillas, or olive baboons and not be struck by the similarities between us.

On the other end of the stick are some of our more distant relatives.  Past the monkeys, past the lemurs, there are the small, nocturnal primates of tropical Africa and Asia, the prosimians ("pre-monkeys").  They tend to be solitary, nocturnal, strictly arboreal, and pretty damn weird.  Few, perhaps, are as bizarre as the slow loris, a sleepy-looking Teddy Bear of a critter with big, lost looking eyes and a body that looks like it's begging for some cuddles... if only it weren't for that venomous bite.  Yes... a venomous primate.  Talk about a black sheep in the family tree.


Bite aside, the slow loris has the misfortune that many of the attributes that monkeys and apes possess that can help convince people that they are unsuitable as pets - their strength, agility, propensity to fling feces, etc - are absent in these little guys.  They are readily (and illegally) plucked from the wild to be sold as pets, where most will suffer a short, unpleasant life before dying of improper care.  What has especially proven to be a problem for the little guys is the series of viral Youtube videos showing people tickling slow lorises, often with captions to the effect of "Isn't this adorable?"  For the loris, it isn't.  Tickling is downright torture.

One organization which is very active in the field, helping to protect slow lorises, is the Little Fireface Project.  Many zoos that work with slow lorises have stepped up to support this organization in its goals to save some of the world's most obscure, exploited primates.  Learn more about their mission and how you can help them here:


Saturday, April 6, 2019

Zoo Review: Monkey Jungle

The life of a field biologist can be a difficult one.  You can spend thousands of dollars getting to your destination, thousands of hours in the field, and sometimes catch only an occasional glimpse of your study subjects.  In the meantime, you may be subjected to diseases, inclement weather conditions, unpleasant encounters with dangerous wildlife, and all of the logistical nightmares of coordinating your research so far from home.


Wouldn't it be easier to bring your research site to you?  Joseph DuMond thought so.  In 1933, DuMond, an ambitious primatologist with a modest budget, decided that his studies of primate behavior would be far simpler if he never left the US.  Acquiring a plot of land in subtropical Florida, outside of Miami, he released six crab-eating macaques from Java, then set about studying their behavior.  As his monkey population grew, so did public interest in them, and the park became open to the public, with additional species added along the way.  Today, this parcel of south Florida is home to the DuMond Conservancy for Primates and Tropical Forests, a non-profit conservation and education organization devoted to the study of primates.  To most tourists and locals, however, it is better known as the home of Monkey Jungle, a wildlife park that likes to boast that it is Where the humans are caged and the monkeys run wild."


The parks tagline is primarily focused on its main exhibit, the habitat from crab-eating macaques.  Over one hundred of the Indonesian monkeys can be observed in their sprawling, 7-acre habitat.  The best way to view them is at the Wild Monkey Swimming Pool, where keepers give a brief presentation on the history of the facility and the natural history of the monkeys alongside their pool.  Treats are scatter-fed to encourage the monkeys to come forward, with some of them even jumping into the water to retrieve a favored food item, just as they would in the wild.  From that view point, it would be easy for me to call this the single most attractive (I'm not sure if it's the best, but again, attractive) monkey exhibit I've ever seen.  The appeal was heightened for me by the fact that I'd never seen this species before - while not endangered in the wild, crab-eating macaques are very rare in US zoo collections (off the top of my head, I can think of only one other zoo that has them - and they were acquired only recently).  It makes an idyllic first impression of the park... which is slightly dampened as you explore the rest of the macaque habitat. 


True to Monkey Jungle's claims, visitors are caged in a tunnel that meanders through the habitat while macaques clamber overhead.  Two things spooked me a little about this, both related to diseases.  First the worry of disease transmission from feces or urine.  Secondly is the opportunity to feed the monkeys.  Now, visitors aren't supposed to feed the macaques by hand - instead they can purchase little boxes of dried fruits and nuts and then pour them into hanging baskets, which the macaques will eagerly pull up.  As an enrichment opportunity, I do admit that it's cool and I wouldn't mind trying it with my monkeys sometimes.  I do worry about a visitor maybe coughing or sneezing into their hands, then absentmindedly feeding the animals, spreading diseases.  I'm actually a little surprised USDA lets this one slide, considering the regulations in place for interacting with primates that I've seen at other places.

The second free-roaming monkey exhibit is the Amazonian Rainforest, home to over one hundred squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, and black-capped capuchins.  This is a much less interactive habitat than the macaque forest, with the visitor standing in a meshed-in room within the exhibit with monkeys coming in overhead or disappearing into the thick forest background  (furnished with trees collected by DuMond from Peru).  The reduced focus on human-animal contact at this exhibit makes the Amazonian Rainforest popular with animal behaviorists who wish to study the semi-wild primates as they navigate their complex habitat and even more complex social-lives.


The Cameroon Gorilla Forest is, at present, only open a few select times each day.  This is done in consideration of the exhibit's lone occupant, a geriatric former circus gorilla named "King."  The former habitat, located near the entrance of the trail, was pretty bland and rocky, while the actually habitat that King occupies is quite nice - very lushly planted and green, which made me realize just how old that gorilla must be - I feel a young animal would have demolished all of that pretty quickly.  I'd be curious to know what Monkey Jungle's plans are in a post-King world (which, not to be morbid, can't be that far off based on how I saw him moving around).  Gorillas are pretty scarce in the United States outside of the AZA's Species Survival Plan, with only a few non-AZA facilities housing them.  It was somewhat sad seeing the big guy alone, but at his age I could see the alternative proving to be far too stressful for him. 


Outside of the three main primate habitats, the rest of Monkey Jungle is a mixed bag.  There are a few small enclosures for parrots (many in geodesic-dome shaped aviaries), sloths, and reptiles, as well as, of course, more primates.  Of these smaller "side" exhibits, they range from okay (such as the two-story mandrill exhibit by the gorilla, or the golden lion tamarins) to pretty bad (habitats for spider monkeys, gibbons, and guenons coming to mind, as well as some glorified bird cages for a red-handed tamarin).  The dichotomy in the size, complexity, and naturalness of the enclosures, as well as the social groupings, I found off-putting.  Yeah, it's great that they've got tons of macaques running together - but mandrills are even more social, forming some of the largest groups of any primates.  Having a pair is nice... having four or five or six would have been better.  After watching the squirrel monkeys race through the trees, it was a bit pitiful to watch the red-handed tamarin scurry around a bare cage.


Seeing Monkey Jungle was definitely on my south Florida to-do list, but having seen it once, I'm considering myself satisfied on that score.  Barring any major new changes to pique my interest, I think that next time I'm in the area, I might just spend a little extra time at Zoo Miami... or the Everglades.





Thursday, April 4, 2019

A Boy Named Sue

Sue was, by far, the biggest racist I have ever worked with.  The mere sight of a visitor of African descent would leave him (yes, "him") violently shaking with rage.  He also wasn't a big fan of women... and he hated - absolutely HATED - people in wheelchairs.  And oh my goodness, the one day that we had a black woman in a wheelchair come by to see him, you would have thought it was the end of the world.

Yeah, Sue had issues... we tended to excuse them on the grounds that he was a white-fronted capuchin monkey, and his upbringing hadn't been the best.  He'd certainly seen a lot of misfortune by the time he found his way under my care... but to the best of my knowledge, none of it at the hands of black women in wheelchairs.

Sue had been an illegal pet, private ownership of primates being banned in my state, but legal a few states over, where he was purchased as a present for a significant other.  I don't know how well the gift was received when first given, but apparently the novelty wore off fairly soon.  They didn't even keep their little bundle of joy long enough to bother looking between his legs.  If they had, maybe they would have settled on a different name.

Sue was my first experience with a former pet primate, and unfortunately not the last.  Almost all of them have been white-fronted capuchins, the monkeys that you see so often in TV and movies, regardless where the movie is taking place.  They are handsome little guys, the size of cats, and like cats they look like they'd be perfect for snuggling up with.  They are not.  Expecting a monkey to stay small, cute, and lovable is like expecting a human child to stay as a baby or toddler instead of becoming a moody, angst-ridden teenager.  Like teenagers, the capuchin will have sex hormones kicking in at some point.  Unlike the teenager, the capuchin is equipped with a not-so-nice set of sharp canine teeth.

By the time Sue reached us, he had basically figured out that he wasn't a person, but couldn't come to terms with the fact that he was a monkey.  Instead, he remained a frustrated little half-man (I've seen something similar with many parrots over the years, which, to be fair, are basically feathery monkeys).  He could expect to live decades longer, and I wasn't sure how happy he'd be for any of those years.  He was happy enough getting affection from those of us who fit his arbitrary standards, especially if we smuggled him his favorite treat (coffee creamer, which he would eagerly drink from a cup).  Still, so many things upset him, we couldn't be with him all the time, and he never showed much promise at getting along with other monkeys.

Sue escaped one day, though thankfully only briefly.  A volunteer was transporting him from his indoor holding to his outdoor play pen when he slipped his leash and sprinted off.  I heard the call over the radio and ran to the scene, more worried that he would find an African-American or handicapped visitor and attack them than I was of his going too far.  As it was, we cornered him ten minutes later.  One glimpse of a coffee creamer in my palm and he was on my shoulder in a flash, cheerfully oblivious to the fuss he had caused.

Stories like this make it sound like working with Sue was fun and cute and quirky.  It wasn't.  It was very stressful - he went from sweet and snuggly to angry ragaholic in the blink of an eye.  Keeping him out of trouble took a lot of effort and time.  He had constant health problems and behavioral problems.  His hygiene was appalling.  No matter how much time I spent working with him, it felt like it was never enough.  I looked at the other monkeys in the zoo, all living together and far less labor-intensive and (at least seemingly) far happier.  Sometimes I just wanted to scream at Sue "WHY CAN'T YOU BE NORMAL!"

Then I remembered why.

Sue taught me one thing about primates - they do not make good pets.  I mean, I'd heard that and been told that before, but he really taught me that.  He's since passed on, but in a way I like to think I've helped him gain a little immortality.  Whenever I hear a visitor say, "Oh, look at the monkeys - I want one!" you can bet I'll pop out of the woodwork immediately.

"Let me tell you about my friend Sue..."

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

"Bubbles" for Baboons

Among my many medical failings, foremost among them has always been this - I can't NOT pick at things.  As a child, pretty much every loose tooth I worried out on my own as soon as I felt the slightest wobble.  I had a scab on my knee throughout all of middle school because I kept reopening it  I trim my nails down until they are essentially nonexistent.  Give me a slight piece of peeling skin from sunburn, and soon I'll have the entire thing off, shedding like a snake.  When something on my body isn't quite right, I can't leave it alone.

So imagine my delight at leaving the doctor's office one day with a marble-sized bubble under my skin - on the underside of my forearm, where I couldn't help but play with it - and being told to leave it alone for two days.

That little bubble, first appearing when I was thirteen years old. was the preamble to my career with primates.

The bubble, you see, was obtained as part of a test to determine if I had tuberculosis, which I previously had only thought of as the killer of sensitive heroines from my mom's Victorian-era romance novels.  It just so happens that Tb is of equal concern to zookeepers and vets, especially for employees working with non-human primates.  Passing this test and demonstrating myself to be Tb-free was a prerequisite for being allowed to work with monkeys and lemurs.

Much of the appeal surrounding apes and other primates is how similar to humans they are, both in physical appearance and in behavior.  Part of that similarity extends to health and immunity - diseases that impact humans can also impact other primates, to a greater degree than you would see with other animals.  I've never worried about giving my dog a cold, or catching one from her.  Zookeepers who have colds or other diseases, however, are often barred from working with primates (by this point, I'm just going to say "primates" and assume that we all understand that we're referring to "non-human" primates).  Keepers working with them require extra health screening.  Visitors on behind-the-scenes tours may be allowed to get up close and personal with big cats, bears, rhinos, or elephants - but seldom gorillas or chimps.  Generally, the closer the species is to humans, in terms of evolution, the greater the risk there is of disease transmission.

It's not surprising that so many monkeys and apes, especially new borns, died in early zoos.  Keepers pulled the infants from their mothers, thinking that they'd be safer in a nursery under human care... and with all those human germs.

It works both ways, of course.  People can get diseases from primates.  There is a lot of evidence that many of the most frightening human illnesses, such as HIV and Ebola, are cross-overs from apes in Africa, possibly making the switch when humans butchered carcasses of those animals for the bushmeat trade.  There have been cases of keepers catching SIV (similar to HIV) and Herpes from Old World monkeys, such as macaques and baboons.  Given the fondness for many primates for "sharing" their feces, urine, and semen with caretakers, it's not hard to see how diseases can be spread.

Two days later, I went back to the doctor.  The skin on my forearm was flat, with no evidence that the bubble was ever there.  With that test passed and that obstacle cleared, I was given a note to bring to the zoo volunteer office.  I was now set to be a primate keeper.

Monday, April 1, 2019

Primates and the Primates Who Care For Them

The Primates are a group of animals made up of by the apes, the monkeys - Old World and New World - and the lemurs and other prosimians. 

Most species are intensely social, living in some of the largest and  most complex family groupings of any mammals.  They are among the most intelligent (after all these years I'm no longer sure I'd say the most intelligent) of animals, and they have a capacity for getting into trouble which has alternately amused, exasperated, and infuriated their caretakers for years. 


I've worked with several species of primates over the years.  I've got to confess, they've never been my favorites.  I don't think I'd ever consider applying for a job that was working with them exclusively as long as I had other options.  Still, there is no denying their charisma and (their occasional) charm.  So, this month, we'll be taking a special look at one of the most popular groups of animals at the zoo.