Science Diary: Monkeys - Capuchins Up Close and Personal: The Pulse of the Planet daily radio program offers free legal online mp3 downloads, exploring the world of sound in nature, culture and science, with audio adventures, world music, extraordinary sound portraits, science diaries, and nature ring-tones; an amazing sonic experience.



Airdate: Jan 13, 2009
Scientist: Tracie McKinney

Click for more shows on...
 ANIMALS ,Monkeys ,behavior


Science Diary: Monkeys - Capuchins Up Close and Personal

Buy button
Who needs an alarm clock with banana-seeking monkeys in the neighborhood?
Transcript:

music; ambience

The monkeys right now are on top of the house; theyre on the steps; theyre in the trees. You can get within two to three feet of these monkeys pretty easily.

Whats a typical morning in the field like for a primatologist? Welcome to Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside.

There are about 21 monkeys in this troupe. Theyre hoping for a banana handout this morning. Im not sure if theyre going to get it, but theyre going try.

Earthwatch scientist Tracie McKinney studies Capuchin monkeys in the forests of Costa Rica.

The barking noise is a general stress / threat call, because there are people standing here and several dogs nearby. The monkeys want their bananas, but theyre always a little wary of the dogs. Nowadays they really feed the monkeys for the tourists. And it is the only troupe that is provisioned in this park. But it helps at least make it fairly regular so that the tourists can see the monkeys when they come by in the afternoon. Provisioning animals or providing food to wild animals is generally a huge no-no for field research, because that could lead to disease transmission. It could make the animals dependent upon humans or it could make them just not fearful of humans anymore. At this particular site though, these monkeys were already provisioned, and they had been for years and years and years. So Im kind of taking advantage of that by using them as my comparison group for monkeys who are not provisioned and who are not living with humans. So I would never provision monkeys on purpose, but since they are, we going to use it and take that data.

And that data is used to plan for the survival of all of Costa Ricas monkeys. Check out our latest project at kidsciencechallenge.com.

Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. Im Jim Metzner.

music







 
Science Diary: Monkeys - Capuchins Up Close and Personal