International

Fishing macaques of Indonesia

A long-tailed macaque looks for fish in a river in Lesan in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

BANGKOK: Long-tailed macaque monkeys have a reputation for knowing how to find food — whether it be grabbing fruit from jungle trees or snatching a banana from a startled tourist.

Now, researchers say they have discovered groups of the silver-haired monkeys in Indonesia that fish.

Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.

“It’s exciting that after such a long time you see new behaviour,” said Erik Meijaard, one of the authors of a study on fishing macaques that appeared in last month’s issue of International Journal of Primatology.

Mr. Meijaard, a senior science adviser at The Nature Conservancy, said it was unclear what prompted the long-tailed macaques to go fishing. But he said it showed a side of the monkeys that is well-known to researchers — an ability to adapt to the changing environment and shifting food sources. “They are a survivor species, which has the knowledge to cope with difficult conditions,” Mr. Meijaard said on Tuesday.

Agustin Fuentes, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame who studies long-tailed macaques, or Macaca fascicularis, on the Indonesian island of Bali and in Singapore, said he was “heartened” to see the finding published because such details can offer insight into the “complexity of these animals.” — AP

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