#primate behaviour

[bignosebaby]

Do you have any neat behavioral facts about Orangutans?

The ones at my local zoo are fairly chill- my favorite is probably Belawan who sometimes hangs out in the hammocks near the glass and watches the visitors.

Orangutans are incredibly interesting because despite being naturally solitary, they can also be very social! They are like true introverts; orangutans need lots of alone time but still enjoy social opportunities. Here are my 3 favourite orangutan behaviours:

Tool use is not limited to hunting and foraging! Orangutans will use large leaves as hats or ponchos to provide shade and rain protection. They can also learn to use tools they have never encountered before by observing others, including humans!

While flanged male orangutans are the most solitary orangutans in the wild, in captivity this is not always true. Berani, a flanged male orangutan living in the Denver Zoo became his young daughter's primary caregiver after her mother died. While wild orangutan fathers never even meet their offspring, Berani does everything a mom would including sleeping with his daughter, carrying her, and even letting her mock-nurse on his skin bib.

While water is incredibly dangerous for orangutans who are much denser and not naturally bouyant like humans, a one-handed orangutan was observed swimming to access a termite nest during flood season in the jungle. This tremendous feat is an example of orangutans intelligence specifically for risk assessment, something that has been studied as part of what makes them such a successful species. Orangutan risk assessment is likely a major asset to surviving being the heaviest arboreal animal, as one would have to calculate which branches can support that weight and how to navigate safely.

Here is Berani the #1 dad with his little daughter Cerah, and here is the video of the orangutan swimming to get an insect snack.

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

hi friends!! i have a question about gorillas/great apes in general - do we all get that nurturing instinct toward little fuzzie animals, like how koko adopted her kittens? she is so gentle toward them...are there any other cases of great apes adopting pets other than us? i think the thing that astounds me the most is the size difference, koko knew the kitties were fragile and handled them with care?! I wonder if this instinct is more common with female great apes? ahah sorry for the long ask im just enamored w this notion....

It isn’t uncommon in the wild for chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas to capture small animals and carry them around, petting them. They frequently eat these animals too, but sometimes they just carry them around and let them go later. We have posted in the past about the silverback that found a tiny marmoset and cradled it for a while before putting it back in the tree he found it in. The bonobo that was photographed with a mongoose was a young male too, so it is not an instinct exclusive to one sex.

While apes can act nurturing to small animals, they can also be... less so. Bonobos eat their prey alive even after a snuggle session, chimpanzees will kill small animals and play with the corpses, and while they can be gentle they don’t always seem to be able to fully grasp if their behaviour is making their little friend uncomfortable. I saw a video of a gibbon in a zoo that caught a squirrel and was treating it to a rather intense grooming session that, while appropriate for a baby gibbon, was not fun for the squirrel. So definitely cute! But there is a reason that giving captive apes little pets is not a common practice.

[pan-troglodytes]

Bonobo females found to protect and support a female giving birth

A team of researchers from the University of Pisa and CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon has observed captive female bonobos helping one of their own give birth. In their paper published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, Elisa Demuru, Pier Francesco Ferrari and Elisabetta Palagi describe what they witnessed, referring to it as a type of midwifery.

[bignosebaby]

do you know if all non-human primates are (typically) adverse to (most) eye contact? :) (i think that there are some situations with certain species where eye contact is more common and nuanced, but i might be wrong) i was at the zoo and i wasn't sure whether to look the lemurs in the eyes or not! (i played it safe and avoided eye contact :) thanks for answering all these questions!! i love your blog!

Awesome question, this is one I took straight to lemur keeper Liam of the Calgary Zoo, where they have a lemur enclosure guests can walk through, barrier-free.

Lemurs are not averse to eye contact, and in general respond a lot more to body language. This is why guests in the lemur enclosure are instructed to not bend down, as keepers assume the same position to feed the lemurs.

Eye contact is typically only a threat in species that have hierarchies where an outsider may threaten the group, and while lemurs can have hierarchies they are not as strict as macaques or chimpanzees. Lemurs threaten each other with stances and smells, in a technique known as 'stink fighting'

These ring tails are challenging each other by showing their scent glands off and preparing to pounce. Their threat language is totally different, and as humans don't have scent marking glands we don't run the risk of accidentally stink-threatening them.

Many species of monkeys are also not very reactive to eye contact, but lemurs are the least reactive of the primates. Besides their different social language, lemurs also don't see humans the same way monkeys and apes do. It is hard to quantify exactly, but apes and monkeys appear to understand humans as being similar to them in a way that lemurs do not.

Avoiding eye contact is a good behaviour to practice, but the most important species to avoid eye contact with are macaques, chimpanzees, gorillas, and capuchins. To my knowledge, they are the most likely to be upset.

[bignosebaby]

Hello! I apologise if this is a question you’ve received before, or if it’s a dumb one, but the other day, I was wondering whether primates at places like, say, zoos prefer a certain type of person or anything like that; I’m so curious about it. Do they have an affinity for people with certain characteristics, or is it all just pretty random? I tried searching online and didn’t find much. Love your blog! :)

Great question! This absolutely happens and it goes both ways. Some primates are particularly fond or wary of specific types of people.

A sanctuary I visited in Costa Rica had a capuchin that would freak out at curly haired men because he had been owned as a pet by one and was traumatized. Likewise, some primates are particularly attracted to people with features resembling caregivers they have had good experiences with.

However, it can also be more mysterious. Some primates appear to like certain types of people (gender, hair colour/style, tattoos, etc.) Without a clear reason. For the most part however, it is the result of being (often inappropriately) close to humans.

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

I think that anon was asking about stuff along the lines of people who eat extremely hot peppers not because they taste good, but because it's weirdly fun to eat something that *isnt* good. (Or, say, a kid eating dog food cause their older sibling dared them to, not cause they think its tasty)

Eating things out of curiousity rather than hunger is a primate trademark. The mouth is one of the primary ways we explore the world! Many primates, including human young children, will greet unfamiliar items mouth first. As such, primates will eat things for entertainment or curiousity. Although, if the taste/sensation isn't good, the chance of eating it again is slim. Rocks, toys, all manner of leaves and plants, dirt... They all might be experimental snacks.

[pan-troglodytes]

Bonobos help strangers without being asked

A passer-by drops something and you spring to pick it up. Or maybe you hold the door for someone behind you. Such acts of kindness to strangers were long thought to be unique to humans, but recent research on bonobos suggests our species is not as exceptional in this regard as we like to think.

[pan-troglodytes]

Orangutans process plants into medicine, study finds

The natural world is full of medicines, many of which have been tapped by pharmaceutical companies to derive products that adorn our drugstore shelves and bathroom cabinets. But humans aren’t the only animals that can find and apply medicinal substances, and now new research adds orangutans to the growing list of species that self-medicate...