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.

Monkey Jungle