Today marks the beginning of what will be a 13-week summer of monkeys. My itinerary over the coming months includes a long trip to the United Kingdom, followed by some time in my favorite place in the entire world, and wraps up with a week in San Antonio, Texas. Let me explain.

MAY & JUNE

Later this evening, I will debark on a flight to Heathrow International Airport, followed by a short train ride to Trentham, U.K. There, I will be conducting social cognitive research at the Trentham Monkey Forest, home to 140 Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). Native to the Algerian Mountains, Barbary macaques are unique for a few reasons. First, they are the only macaque species known to reside outside of Asia. Similar to the other macaques, they are highly skilled at adapting to just about anywhere and can survive in a range of ecosystems including forests, grasslands, and of course, the mountainous regions of Algeria & Morocco. In addition, Barbary macaques engage in alloparenting, or cooperative care of the offspring by nondirect relatives [1].  Father macaques also help in caring for their own offspring. This is highly unusual among primates, and especially among macaques. Finally, the Barbary macaques are believed to be more tolerant than the species I typically study [2], the rhesus macaque (more on them below!).  As such, the Barbary macaques provide a really neat study species for us to look at in comparison to other more despotic species to see how sociality influences cognition.

JULY

Following my extended stay in the United Kingdom, I will head to Punta Santiago, Puerto Rico. Punta Santiago, Puerto Rico is a small fishing village on the east coast of Puerto Rico. Of the last four years, I’ve lived in Punta Santiago collectively for about a year and a half and have come to deeply love the community there. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to going back.

Right off the coast is a small island called Cayo Santiago, and home to the Cayo Santiago Biological Field Station. There are over 1,200 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) on the island, diverse in age, sex, and social status, giving us the unique opportunity to study social cognition in a free-living primate under naturalistic conditions. As aforementioned, rhesus macaques are despotic — they exhibit a strict linear dominance hierarchy where there is an alpha male and then a number of males that each rank a little bit lower than the last. Compared to many of the other macaques, and especially the Barbary macaques, they are aggressive and exhibit relatively low rates of reconciliatory behaviors [3]. Rhesus macaques are well studied — to date, we know a lot about their social cognition thanks to the work of the Comparative Cognition Lab at Yale and a number of other labs around the world that travel to Puerto Rico to study these monkeys [4]. More on the field site, Punta Santiago, my research, and Puerto Rico more generally later, but you will have to follow along for those updates!

AUGUST

My final destination for the summer is San Antonio, Texas, where I will be attending the 41st Meeting of the American Society for Primatologists. I’ve never been to Texas before, so I’m pretty excited to visit and I’m hoping I’ll have at least a little time to explore. If you have any recommendations for a day trip or dinner, please let me know!

Alright, well, I have a bit of writing to get to, but I hope that this provides some insight into my crazy life, and some relief to my friends and family who keep asking me to explain where I will be all summer. I’ll try to update this blog regularly with some details about my travel and information about my research. Stay tuned for more photos!

REFERENCES

[1] Small, M. F. (1990). Alloparental behaviour in Barbary macaques, Macaca sylvanus. Animal Behaviour, 39(2), 297-306.

[2] Thierry, B. (2007). Unity in diversity: lessons from macaque societies. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 16(6), 224-238.

[3] Waal, F., & Ren, R. (1988). Comparison of the reconciliation behavior of stumptail and rhesus macaques. Ethology, 78(2), 129-142.

[4] Drayton, L. A., & Santos, L. R. (2016). A decade of theory of mind research on Cayo Santiago: insights into rhesus macaque social cognition. American journal of primatology, 78(1), 106-116.