Rule number two: The monkeys are the free ones.īut it's not time for the humans to eat just yet, so we keep walking - up a steep hill. "It's like a zoo where the monkeys come to see the humans," she says. At Cayo Santiago the people are in cages and the monkeys are free, Ruiz-Lambides explains. We walk along a dirt path, toward a large metal cage. So rule number one on Cayo Santiago: Don't get peed on by the monkeys. These monkeys naturally carry herpes B, a version of the virus that can be deadly to humans. Ruiz-Lambides actually has one of the best job titles ever - monkey island census taker.īut her warning about not getting peed on is serious. "Just be careful they don't pee on you," says Angelina Ruiz-Lambides, a member of a team of researchers from the University of Puerto Rico who manage this island, which is called Cayo Santiago. Then, up in a tree, I see two beige monkeys looking down. And right away, I hear this sort of spooky grunting noise. The boat pulls up to the dock, and as we get out we scrub the soles of our shoes with a brush and dip them in pink disinfecting liquid. Up ahead, I can see the island - steep cliffs and lush green trees. Someone fires up the engine and the boat begins to cross a calm channel of water. It's sunrise, as I start my visit, and a bunch of scientists are climbing into a boat. Over the years, at least nine generations of rhesus macaques have yielded interesting insights into, among other things, kinship and the interplay between genetics and behavior - the sorts of questions that detailed, longitudinal research of a broad, free-ranging population can best answer. The idea, according to Richard Rawlins, the former director of research on Cayo Santiago, was to make things easier, by putting the monkeys on a small island, closer to the U.S., "where the animals were always there, could easily be accessed, and large amounts of data could be collected efficiently, within a short amount of time." The National Institutes of Health and the University of Puerto Rico fund the research. Back then, biologists were spending a lot of time chasing monkeys around the jungles of Asia and Africa. Scientists from all over the world come to the island to study questions of primate behavior, cognition and ecology. The island of Cayo Santiago hosts the oldest research center in the world for wild primates. What you're picturing is a real-life island off the coast of Puerto Rico. And, these monkeys have a disease that could kill you, if you're not careful. But now, imagine there are hundreds of monkeys on this island. There are coconut trees, rocky cliffs, blue-green waters. Imagine you're on a tropical island in the Caribbean.
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