Capuchin monkeys kidnap babies from another species, and mortal kidnappings are captured in the chamber

A baby howler clung to the rear of a major male monkey, his small fingers grabbing fur. But they are not related and not even the same species.

The scientists saw surprising evidence of what they describe as monkey kidnappings while reviewing video images of a small island in Panama. The Capuchin monkeys were seen with at least 11 howlers between 2022 and 2023, the researchers said on Monday.

“This was a very shocking finding,” said Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for animal behavior in Germany. “We have not seen anything like this in the animal kingdom.”

The motivations of the monkeys remain under investigation. Capuchins are homemade monkeys the size of a cat found in South America and Central America. They are long life, intelligent and learn new behaviors from each other. A group of Capuchins in Panama has even learned to use stone tools to break nuts and seafood.

Goldsberg and other researchers from Max Planck and the Tropical Research Institute Smithsonian had established more than 80 cameras to study the use of the Capuchin tool, but were surprised to see that the first howmers appear in early 2022.

Goldsborough initially found that four different howlers were transported. In almost all cases, the culprit was the same subadult man. The scientists nicknamed the Joker Capuchin because the little scar on the side of his mouth reminded them of the villain “Batman.”

At first, scientists thought this was the “moving history of a strange cappuccino that adopts these babies,” Goldsborough said.

Then, the researchers began to find other cases that did not involve Joker. The scientists were baffled because the Capuchins did not eat or take advantage of the babies, nor seemed to enjoy playing with them.

Goldsborough said they finally realized that these kidnappings were a social or “fashion” tradition among young male caps on the island.

Kinding destination for kidnapped babies

The images showed the Capuchins walking and hitting their stone tools with baby howls on the back. But the cameras did not capture the moments of kidnapping, which the scientists said they probably happened in the trees, where the howmers spend most of their time.

“Our window to this story is limited,” said Co -author Margaret Crophoot by Max Planck and Smithsonian. The findings were published on Monday in Current Biology magazine.

In most or all cases, babies’ howmers died, the researchers said. Children’s monkeys would normally be transported by their mothers while they still breastfeed. All babies in the video, from a few weeks to a few months of age, were too young to be weaned.

“A hopeful part of me wants to believe that some escaped and returned to their mothers, but we don’t know,” said Crophoot.

The videos recorded some cases of young cappuiners who still wear howlers who had died, probably because of starvation. Many animals have been observed, from gorillas to orcs. Leading to their dead descendantsalthough scientists are not sure of the reasons.

Why did Capuchin males? There were no signs of deliberate aggression towards babies and were not eaten, discarding predation.

“We have all spent hours twisting our brains, why would they do this?” Goldsborough said.

The first cischero baby could have had a confused “motivation”, or instinct of the parents, because he showed kindness interacting with babies, he said. Then four other men copied their actions.

The researchers said they do not believe that the Capuchins damaged babies on purpose. Until now, it is only known that a group of Capuchins kidnap.

The research shows the “notable behavioral variation between social groups of the same species,” said Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France, which did not participate in the study.

The cultural fashions that spread among animals are rare but not unknown.

Barrett has previously studied Capuchins in Costa Rica that suddenly began preparing porcupines, before getting bored of the trend.

And in the 1980s, the murderous whales got dead salmon in their heads off the northwest coast of the United States. This trend returned decades later when the Orcs were again seen with these “salmon hats” last year.

Agance France-Presse contributed to this report.

In:
• Panama
• Science