Barbary macaque navigate their environment to cope with the presence of humans

Our study (Waterman et al 2019) shows that macaques make many behavioural adjustments in response to varying levels of human activity. Macaques balance food acquisition and risk avoidance – for example they minimise risk by avoiding areas used by local shepherds and their dogs (which are now among the monkeys’ most dangerous predators), and exploit […]

Metabolic flexibility of Barbary macaques

The endangered Barbary macaques have to cope with extreme environmental conditions, from cold and snowy winters to hot and dry summers. Under these extreme and diverse ecological conditions full-filling their daily energetic requirements may be very difficult for macaques. We have recently published a study that analyse the metabolic strategies of Barbary macaques in response […]

Why grooming is good for you

Our team has recently published two studies on the benefits of grooming exchange in Barbary macaques. Grooming is intensely studied by primatologists as a model behaviour to analyse the benefits of sociality. In our first study (Molesti & Majolo 2015) we found that grooming did not increase food tolerance soon after a grooming interaction ended. This […]

Who is your best ally in a fight?

We have had a new paper published in Animal Behaviour on male Barbary macaques and who they pick to support them in a fight. Find the paper here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347214002590 Male primates are known to cooperate together to gain greater benefits than they could achieve alone, such as access to females for mating or to increase their […]