For 12 years, primatologist Nadine Ruppert and her colleagues have had one recurring task on their calendar: tagging along with a group of southern pig-tailed macaques in Segari, Peninsular Malaysia, as these primates hop between native rainforests and the neighboring oil palm plantations. Over the years, the researchers successfully habituated the group: they named every individual, discerned their life histories, and watched their behavior to understand how these monkeys adapt to human-modified landscapes such as agricultural plantations. Southern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), an endangered species native to the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, live in groups of up to 60 individuals and feed primarily on fruits. With oil palm plantations encroaching on their natural habitats, these primates increasingly venture into plantations to feed on palm fruits and rats. In the process, they risk being eaten by feral dogs, hunted by humans, or caught by traffickers for the pet trade. When Ruppert and her colleagues noticed that in 10 years, more than half of the baby pig-tailed macaques born in the group died before they turned a year old, they knew something was off. “When we looked into birth rates and survival rates of these infants, in some years, there were shockingly not a single individual baby surviving,” Ruppert told Mongabay. After analyzing the behavior and movements of the macaques for a study published in the journal Current Biology, the researchers identified the culprit: exposure to oil palm plantations. Infant southern pig-tailed macaque feeding on an oil palm fruit. Image courtesy…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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