Change is afoot and people aren’t sure what to make of it. Last Monday, the Bronx Zoo officially closed its 111-year-old Primate (“Monkey”) House, citing a need for change in the ways the animals are exhibited—an evolution, if you will. Responses have revealed how deeply unsettling the closure is to the general psyche of the [...]

Uganda’s Kibale forest is such a hotspot for primate research that when our group of 40 biologists arrived this August to study ants (=definitely not primates!) we received some strange looks. Why look at insects when the trees are full of a dozen monkey species? That insects are, in fact, waaaaayyy more interesting than monkeys [...]

It took more than 30 years for science to formally identify the Caquetá titi monkey (Callicebus caquetensis) of Colombia as a new species. Now it probably won’t last another 30 years unless it is protected, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which on Tuesday added the monkey and more than 1,900 [...]

An endangered Old World monkey species found in only two sites in Tanzania is in danger of being poached and eaten into extinction, researchers from the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) and Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Center reported last week. The Sanje mangabey (Cercocebus sanjei) lives only in the Mwanihana Forest and the Udzungwa Scarp Forest [...]

Red colobus monkeys in Uganda’s Kibale National Park are being hunted to extinction—by chimpanzees. According to a study published May 9 in the American Journal of Primatology, this is the first documented case of a nonhuman primate significantly overhunting another primate species. (The taxonomy of Ugandan red colobus monkeys is in dispute. Some scientists consider [...]

Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a four-part series of essays for Scientific American by primatologist Frans de Waal on human nature, based on his ongoing research. De Waal and other researchers appear in a series of Department of Expansion videos focusing on the same topic. How often do we see rich people [...]

Whereas monkeys that are put on a restricted diet long-term may be healthier than monkeys that are fed 50% more, they don’t live longer. But you have to admit, the monkeys do look spritely.

Intestinal issues are not just for us humans. Whereas the inflammatory bowel disease (IBS) now afflicts some 1.4 million people in the U.S., a similar condition often besets captive monkeys. But these animals are providing new insights about a cure for this condition in both species—and that cure is worms. Rhesus macaque monkeys living in [...]

Rhesus macaques, which are some of the best studied of all monkeys, establish hierarchies in their social groups. Whenever two macaques tussle over a piece of food, say, or the right to mate, the monkey with the higher rank usually wins. Primatologists have established that monkeys of a lower social status are generally more stressed [...]

With high-speed DNA sequencing, scientists can look at slight genetic differences among humans, great apes and other primates to arrive at new estimates of when different ancestral groups split. These findings provide invaluable insights into the evolutionary past, especially when the fossil record is sparse, as it is for the period when the ancestors of [...]

Like a lot of humans, monkeys might not be able to do calculus. But a new study shows that they can learn and rapidly apply abstract mathematical principles. Previous work has shown that monkeys and birds can count, but flexible applications of higher mathematic rules, the study authors asserted, "require the highest degree of internal [...]

If you gave an infinite number of (or six) monkeys (and related, which I think means mammals) an infinite (also six) number of synthesizers, will they eventually produce Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or ACDC’s Back in Black or, well, anything? Someone thought they’d give it a go as an advertisement for Voltfestivalen — The place [...]

Yay, more primates. Right? Before moving on to other things (the list of subjects that need to be covered at Tet Zoo ASAP is now worryingly and impractically long), I must finish with the Proboscis monkey Nasalis larvatus [adjacent photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen]. In the previous article I discussed various aspects of this fascinating monkey’s [...]

I am perpetually interested in monkeys. One of the most remarkable and interesting of them all has to be the uniquely Bornean Proboscis monkey Nasalis larvatus, also sometimes called the Long-nosed monkey or Bekantan. Proboscis monkeys are famously named for the enormous, pendant, tongue-shaped noses of adult males; those of juveniles and females are shorter [...]

Marmosets and tamarins (callitrichids) are small platyrrhine monkeys: total lengths range from 40 cm for the Pygmy marmoset Cebuella pygmaea to 75 cm for the Golden lion tamarin Leontopithecus rosalia. The Pygmy marmoset can weigh as little as 120 g. Callitrichids are unique to tropical South [UPDATE: and Central!] America. About 60 species are recognised, [...]

A trip to an unfamiliar part of the world is all you need in order to realize that humans have vastly different ways of eating, playing, talking, problem-solving, and so much more. Some of us use forks, while others prefer chopsticks, and still others simply eat with their hands. All three of these solutions emerged [...]

Specks. Stripes. Red fur. Black fur. Eye masks. Bald spots. Beards. Moustaches. New World monkeys are nature’s motley crew. Their faces display an extraordinary range of colours and patterns. Some are simple and straightforward, others intricate and complex. Take the bald uakari. Its hypervascularized, red skin is striking, but uniform. The uakari’s nose is just [...]