Capuchin Vr are New World monkeys that are characterized by their social life. They live in groups of 16 individuals, including males and females.
They also engage in unique behaviors that are thought to strengthen their social bonds. These behaviors include tail-sucking, hair-prying, and hand-sniffing.
Unique Behaviors
The capuchin monkey is a common New World primate called sapajou, which lives in tropical forests from Nicaragua to Paraguay. These monkeys are round-headed, stockily built with opposable thumbs and fully-haired, prehensile tails.
They can be found in troops of 20 or more animals, including males and females. They typically eat fruit, vegetables, and invertebrates.
When capuchin monkeys are in social groups, they learn many behaviors that strengthen their bonds with each other. This includes grooming, such as tail-sucking and hair-prying.
In addition, they have a tradition of cracking nuts. These nuts are protected by a hard shell covered with gooey exudate and lined on the inside with stinging hairs.
Capuchin monkeys can learn these skills through a process known as “payoff bias.” This learning strategy is unique among wild primates. It has the potential to shed light on how animals can adapt to changing environments.
Tail-Sucking
One of the most entertaining capuchin vr behaviors is the tail-sucking craze. This is the most common behavior in the wild and may also be found at zoos. The most common variation involved one sucking on the other’s tail while they sit or squat on it, with the tail retracted.
In this particular group of rhesus macaques, the tail-sucking craze is accompanied by a few other curious behavior traits, including using tools to extract ants from the ground or hold water in their snouts. Other interesting behaviors include:
- Using paper towels to soak up juices.
- Spitting a puddle.
- Putting their hands in their ears to listen to their heartbeat.
A few zoos have even caught them on camera sucking on an apple or two. They also take a break from their solitary lives to play with other monkeys. To look at these enigmatic critters in action, visit the Monkey Living Center near Boston or see them on film at a zoo.
Hair-Prying
In Costa Rica, a group of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) engage in rather unusual behaviors to help test their social bonds. At times they’re risky, but the result is fun for everyone involved.
One example of the bizarre is hair-prying, a ritual where a capuchin pulls or bites off another monkey’s hair and sticks it in their mouth. In a recent study, Susan Perry and her colleagues recorded almost 450 oddball occurrences in four groups at three different study sites.
Perry and her team are analyzing these data sets to learn more about the evolution of these unique behavior patterns over time. While these traditions were a reoccurring novelty, they typically disappeared within a few years. This is one of the first studies to investigate the function and origins of these novel behaviors. It’s also the first time researchers have seen a monkey display a single, unique, seemingly random behavior pattern over an extended period.
Hand-Sniffing
When wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) forage, they use stone tools to crack various nuts. They may adjust their tool selection to changing properties of a nut’s mesocarp.
A nut’s ripening process causes its caustic defensive substance to decrease, making it easier to crack. But if the mesocarp gets too ripe, it can become dangerous for capuchin monkeys who eat it.
To test whether wild capuchins recognize and respond to changes in nut properties, we measured the hammer size and weight used to crack two maturation stages of cashew nuts. We found that, during ripening, capuchin monkeys used larger stone tools.
To spread a social tradition, the behavior must meet several criteria:
- It must be observed for at least six months.
- It must be enduring in the repertoire.
- It must endure through a chain of 5 or more observer monkeys.
- In addition, the behavior must be spread through a group’s social network.