Somtimes Life is Pretty Hard

Audubon Magazine March 2008

Monkeying Around

The story seems improbable, and the adage that photographs don’t lie is meaningless in the Photoshop Age. But by all accounts, this infant macaque was literally adopted (dare I say taken under its wing?) by one of China’s ubiquitous white pigeons at a national nature preserve. Neilingding Island embraces a mountainous 1,368 acres in South China’s broad Pearl River estuary, not far from Hong Kong. The island is home to some 1,000 rhesus macaques, a protected species in China. As the tale is told, the 12-week-old monkey was separated from its mother and close to death when it was rescued by a refuge worker. But the little guy simply wouldn’t perk up until the bird became its inseparable friend. This sweet photograph of the orphan and its companion was snapped by chance by Jianbin Huo, a young Chinese photojournalist visiting the island.

Macaques have also been in the science spotlight of late. A primatologist from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore reported in Animal Behaviour that a female macaque is three times more apt to engage in sexual activity if a male has groomed her than if grooming has not occurred. Dr. Michael Gumert, who recorded the behavior of long-tailed macaques at an Indonesian reserve over a 20-month period, said that grooming is the underlying fabric of primate societies. “It’s a sign of friendship and family,” he told the Associated Press, “and it’s also something that can be exchanged for sexual services”—though that depends, of course, on what a female prefers. Gumert adds that the “fee” could be cheaper depending on what scientists call the biological market. “When the female supply is higher,” he explains, “the male spends less time on grooming.”

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists have reportedly been trying to create cyborg pigeons, implanting microelectrodes in the birds’ brains so that signals from a computer can control their flight patterns. Su Xuecheng, chief scientist at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Center, told the People’s Daily that it was the first successful experiment of its kind using a pigeon and that the technology might one day be put to practical use. It’s worth noting that according to gambling lore, 2,000 years ago the Chinese used homing pigeons to carry lottery results. What we now call keno was then known as the “white pigeon game,” and the proceeds, some say, helped build the Great Wall.—Les Line