In the spirit of Election Day here in the US, I stopped for a minute to think about the voting behavior of nonhuman primates.  I remembered working with Ring-tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta) on St. Catherines, where I was able to witness the  lemur voting process on numerous occasions.  One particularly memorable event was what I will call “Lemur Election 2006.”

Meet the Incumbent:  Marie.

Marie, an older ring-tailed lemur, seemed to relish her position as the top-ranked female in the colony. Her bright, clear eyes, strong muscles, and slight belly bulge substantiated the fact that she always enjoyed preferred access to food.  Marie regularly produced healthy babies, often well-treated girls that would someday have the chance to inherit her ability to be the highest ranking female.  Although there had been no speeches, debates, or casted ballots, the females of the group allowed Marie to be their leader year after year. (Since female lemurs are dominant to males, I wasn’t surprised that even the males accepted her leadership without question.)  No one could determine exactly how Marie was voted in, but she was the top-ranked female for as long as any of the zookeepers could remember.

Meet the Challenger:  Jen

One day, I was surprised to see Jen,  a lower-ranked female, walk up to a comfortably sleeping Marie and then give a grunt.  Marie looked a little surprised, but she shifted over to a new sleeping position in the tree. Over the next few days, I began to see more evidence of rebellion from other individuals in the group, as other females began displacing Marie from her sleeping and feeding sites.  Grunts became cuffs (kind of like hard slaps), followed by bites, followed by chasing episodes.  Amazed, I watched even the youngest females work Marie into a fearful frenzy as she desperately flew up trees to avoid conflict with them.

And within a week or so, it was clear. Marie had lost the election.

I subsequently witnessed this pattern several times, with both male and female lemurs. Marie was fortunate because her group allowed her to stay, albeit in a much more subservient status, perhaps because she was the old mother of the group and had proved she would not pose much of a future threat.  Other lemurs that were ousted were not always so lucky. Losing the lemur vote usually meant expulsion from the group, and sometimes even death.

Nonhuman primates vote for their leaders by their social behavior. Today, we encourage you to do it like a human, and visit the polls to vote!

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For more about Ring-tailed lemurs, click here.

The following is an edited excerpt from a question sent in by a reader.

A couple of years ago while camping near Lewiston , MN, I awoke just after dawn to the sound of an animal scavenging a pack of graham crackers that was accidentally left on the picnic table outside my tent.  When I saw the animal on the table, I thought it was a raccoon. It was about a foot tall to the shoulder and was moving on all fours.  When I got closer, it raised it’s head and looked in my direction, then very quickly went to an upright position, jumped off the table and climbed the nearest tree.  It was grayish on the underside of the torso and black everywhere else.  The odd part is that it held the crackers in it’s hand and used it’s free hand back legs and tail to climb.  Once in the canopy it swung from branch to branch looking very much monkey like.  My question is this:  Are there any other sightings in the upper midwest, that you are aware of, of small primates?

Rose’s response:

This is a great question! It must be since hundreds of people annually call into DNR, local zoos, news stations, etc with primate sightings all over the U.S. These calls may be investigated by zoo personnel or the local Department of Natural Resources (DNR), particularly if there is reason to believe a primate is on the loose in the area. In fact, when I was working down south, we responded to several calls one year because it was believed that some of our primates had escaped our facility without our knowledge. (That didn’t happen, by the way!) I would venture to say that 99.9% of the time, the animals being sighted are not actually primates, but are other unusual mammals endemic to the area.

One main factor that prevents primate populations from ranging in the vast majority of the U.S. is temperature. Most primates are adapted to tropical weather, and thus primates housed in zoos across North America must bring their primates into heated areas when temperatures begin to fall. Given the temperature fluctuations in much of the country, it would not be feasible for any small-bodied monkeys we know of to be able to survive. In the case of a single escaped primate, it would be very difficult for most primates to live completely on their own in the wild, as primates are typically social and need membership in a group for survival. A solitary primate would be extremely vulnerable to predation, disease, and an inability to find food.  (Note: primates did live in a once warmer North America…click here for more info!)

There are isolated cases where macaques have been found on the loose years after their known escape from labs or zoos. The reason for their success? They are large-bodied, which means less vulnerable to predation, can survive on all sorts of food, are excellent scavengers, and are adapted for cold-weather living. But even so, these cases are restricted to the warmer regions of the US, namely Florida and southern Texas.

I cannot definitively tell you what animal it was that you saw. My best guess is that it was not a primate, unless the animal was a pet that had very recently escaped from someone’s home or an animal facility of some sort. However, recently escaped animals tend to be extremely shy, avoiding eating altogether because they are so stressed. Thus, it is unlikely that a primate of this sort would be so bold as to scavenge food off your table in this way. But, not to say it is completely impossible! Just highly unlikely.

In reading your description of the behavior, it is hard to tell which animal it might have been. Several non-primate mammals are capable of grasping food with their “hands” and climbing trees. My first instinct was that you had seen a mink, which could be confused for monkeys, given their size, agility, and cleverness. However, the swinging in the trees is something unusual! Mink can climb trees, but then would scamper away across the branches. Plus, mink would likely carry the food in their mouth while climbing, not in one hand. Your description of the animal utilizing the tail for climbing…only a few primates use their tails in this way, and the only primate with an opposable tail that also brachiates is a spider monkey (seen in image to the left), which are quite larger than you described and  would not be moving on all fours. Spider monkeys are sometimes housed as pets, so I suppose one could have been loose at the campsite. However, they still cannot survive cold weather and would have to have been out accidentally, not surviving alone for any extended period of time. Plus, a monkey of this sort is very recognizable, and most likely you would have had no doubt you were looking at one.

The calls I personally responded to  turned out to be a relatively rare color variant of fox squirrel, when the suspicious character was finally sighted again. It was big, and striped gray and white, so people had assumed it was a lemur. If you saw an unusual mammal, it would be helpful to check out a guide to the mammals in the area where you make the sighting. For instance, the Minnesota DNR has a list of mammal species endemic to the state.  See if any of these animals resemble at all what you saw. But remember, the animals in pictures often do not resemble what we see when we view them in 3D, actually moving around in the wild. Also, the mammals can have different color variations than what you see in the pictures, so we can’t rely too much on color alone. At any rate, it is fun to speculate on all the possibilities in this case, and I am glad you shared with me!

I hope this somewhat answers your question. You are not alone in your primate sighting, but it is hard to determine what the animal was in this case. If you ever see something like this again, be sure you grab your camera and follow that animal to get a picture. You can contact your local DNR to find out if anyone has reported a missing primate or made similar sightings. (A DNR representative verified that they do not usually respond to primate sightings unless you have a photo, so that is key.)  And who  knows? You might not be “just seeing things” at all but instead have discovered a completely new species of mammal or helped a local facility recover their missing animal in the process.

Hotel pools are devoid of swimmers at 8:00 in the morning, and I like to take the advantage of the opportunity to get a little sun and exercise first thing in the morning while traveling. However, this prime time for a solitary swim comes with the increased risk that the maintenance crew will also arrive to clean out the pool for the new day. So it happened one day not so long ago. I sat by the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water and patiently waiting for the pool boy to skim debris out the water with the long pool net. We engaged in small talk for a while, and after asking how long I was going to be staying at the hotel, “Rusty” inquired as to whether I was heading for the “Big Top” that evening.

“The ‘Big Top,’ as in the circus?” I marveled. Apparently, the town’s biggest production of the year was the traveling circus that set up camp for a week, promising amazing sights and the display of death-defying feats to the delight of all who entered the giant tent.

It’s been quite a few years, but I have been to a circus a few times. The beautiful costumes, colorful clowns, and somewhat terrifying displays of human bravery were mesmerizing and certainly memorable. I ate more than my share of popcorn and snow cones and even relished in the purchase of my very own glow-in-the-dark sword. The circus certainly has a lot of fun oozing down the gum-covered bleachers. But, even as a child, I had a feeling that something just didn’t fit in with the whole production. Why were elephants made to walk around the ring in continuous circles, eyes glazed over and skin sloughing off?  Why were lions whipped and forced through flaming hoops when it clearly made them agitated? Was that really a chimpanzee with a heavy chain on it’s neck, being pushed with a stick so he would run on a ball? I could understand humans willingly submitting themselves to the circus antics, but to involve animals that didn’t appear to enjoy their line of work , seemed a little strange.

Sitting on the sunny poolside deck, hand up to my squinted eyes, I listened to Rusty as he described the location of the circus and pricing and where to park. Eventually, I had a chance to interject my thoughts into the conversation. I smiled and simply said, “Well, Rusty…I choose not go to circuses that use exotic animals in their shows.”

That sounded a little presumptuous…what Rusty needed was further information. I told him about what happens to primates specifically. These highly social animals end up spending far too much time caged alone, or in the presence of human company, which does not give them the chance to display natural social behaviors. Some circus workers have used unethical training methods, including the use of electric shock when animals do not cooperate. I elaborated on how primates often become uncontrollable when they reach adulthood and are either caged indefinitely or given away by the only family they have every known–their owners and/or trainers. Alternatively, some monkeys have their teeth pulled out to prevent biting. Primates in circuses often display visible signs of depression, fear, and neglect. I made sure to let Rusty know that unless the use of wild animals ceases in circuses, I will have to bypass the other fun events that The Big Top can deliver.

Rusty dumped the waterlogged grasshoppers he had gathered over the fence and then gave me a thoughtful look. “Well, I never really thought about that before. Poor little ‘fellars. Guess I might head down to the Kickstarter tonight instead.”  Well, it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for me to tell you what type of club the Kickstarter is, but by this point, the pool was sparkling clean, so I decided to let it go. I dove in with a smile.

**Be sure to read our posting about “Tilin,” a Hamadryas Baboon rescued from a Bolivian Circus by Animal Defenders International.

In a former posting covering female dominance, I referred to the particular structure of ring-tailed lemur society in which all adult females are dominant over all adult males.  In order to be allowed to hang around and gain the benefits of group living, male lemurs submit to females when it comes to access to food, water, and sleeping sites.  It might be easy to look at these males as being wimpy since they pretty much avoid challenging female authority over them. However, I have witnessed extreme counts of unmitigated violence among adult males during the breeding season that has resulted in severe injuries and even their death. (Cute and cuddly? Of course. Capable of inflicting serious bodily harm? Most definitely!) Male ring-tails exhibit all sorts of fighting styles, usually beginning with a “stink fight” whereby they rub their tails with scent and fling it at each other, but potentially escalating to acrobatic grappling and vicious biting. If a male doesn’t fight fiercely for breeding rights during the mating season, he may not have any offspring the following year. So, while males spend most  of their lives in a submissive state towards others in the group, there are definitely times when aggression heightens and their combative side is revealed. Males can quickly become anything but wimpy in regards to staking their claim on breeding females. I like to think of lemurs as the Knights of the Primate Kingdom who keep their manhood by practicing a devout code of chivalry: respect female group members but possess adept strength and skill to fight when the need arises.  And you’d best believe, no mama can resist a tough guy with a sensitive side.

My seventh trip to the field, but I still can’t get enough of seeing wild monkeys in action! I am currently in Panama serving as a darter’s assistant, whereby we are helping researchers tranquilize monkeys for their ppps (particular primate projects!) This time, we are collaring individuals with GPS collars that give the researchers continuous data on when the animals are active, where they are traveling, and even whether they are spending more time suspended upside down or right side up. While the animals are tranquilized, we also collect other important information, such as body measurements, whether any parasites such as ticks or worms are present, and a few blood and fecal samples. Researchers can use this information to determine the health status of their subjects and to perform genetic analyses to figure out the family tree of their research groups.

The actual darting is done by my good friend, who I have been working with for 10 years and who has almost 20 years of experience shooting all sorts of primates with little neon darts loaded with sleepy-time drugs. Once the dartman hits a primate, I help follow the animal as the effects of the drugs kick in, which takes about 2 minutes total. Prepped with a large cargo net, my job is to catch the primate once it falls from the trees, often very high above our heads so that it is not injured from the rapid descent. Once the animal falls, we have to do all the processing quickly, since they begin to wake up within an hour. After about two hours, the special primates are tagged and ready to be released back up into the same spot where we caught them, usually a bit disoriented, but quickly recovering and leaving to rejoin their groups.

This trip, we are focusing on capturing spider monkeys and capuchins. Spider monkeys are wonderful darting subjects since they tend to stay still for long periods of time and hang upside down, derriers pointing downward, presenting the perfect target for a loaded dart. Capuchins, on the other hand, are one of the most difficult primates to dart. They are small and very rarely stop moving long enough to get a good shot. In addition, they are extremely smart, and they recognize our darter from previous experiences with him. As soon as he shows up, they high tail it into the opposite direction! But, what would true fieldwork be without a few um…challenges? The trails on BCI are difficult, since they are steep, but the facilities here are marvelous. We actually have hot showers and ice cold drinks at the end of our long day, which is definitely as good as it gets in this line of work!