Manipulative Monkeys: The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal

by Susan Perry, Joseph H. Manson

Overview

With their tonsured heads, white faces, and striking cowls, the monkeys might vaguely resemble the Capuchin monks for whom they were named. How they act is something else entirely. They climb onto each other’s shoulders four deep to frighten enemies. They test friendship by sticking their fingers up one another’s noses. They often nurse—but sometimes kill—each other’s offspring. They use sex as a means of communicating. And they negotiate a remarkably intricate network of alliances, simian politics, and social intrigue. Not monkish, perhaps, but as we see in this downright ethnographic account of the capuchins of Lomas Barbudal, their world is as complex, ritualistic, and structured as any society.

Manipulative Monkeys takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson have followed the lives of four generations of capuchins. What the authors describe is behavior as entertaining—and occasionally as alarming—as it is recognizable: the competition and cooperation, the jockeying for position and status, the peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and the complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations of the monkeys’ lives are the authors’ colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork—a mixture so rich that by the book’s end we know what it is to be a wild capuchin monkey or a field primatologist. And we are left with a clear sense of the importance of these endangered monkeys for understanding human behavioral evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674060388
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/11/2011
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Susan Perry is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Joseph H. Manson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Prologue     1
All in a Day's Work     8
The Social Intelligence Debate and the Origins of the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project     27
The Challenges of Foraging and Self-Medication     53
Predators, Prey, and Personality     72
Capuchin Communication     89
Abby and Tattle: Two Females' Political Careers     116
Curmudgeon: The Career of an Alpha Male     134
Moth and Tranquilo: The Strategies of Incoming Alpha Males     168
Kola and Jordan: Lethal Aggression and the Importance of Allies     199
Miffin, Nobu, and Abby: Capuchin Mothers, Infants, and Babysitters     220
Guapo: Innovation and Tradition in the Creation of Bond-Testing Rituals     245
Social Learning and the Roots of Culture     264
Nobu and La Lucha sin Fin: Conservation of Tropical Dry Forests     288
Epilogue     308
Cast of Characters     317
Timeline of Events in Abby's and Rambo's Groups     325
Glossary of Behavioral Terms in the Capuchin Communicative Repertoire     329
Works Cited     332
Acknowledgments     347
Index     351

What People are Saying About This

Capuchins are no regular monkeys. They have huge brains, and seem about as smart and 'cultured' as any ape. I know of no better guides to their social life than Susan Perry and Joe Manson, who have devoted their lives to studying these often overlooked creatures in the jungles of Costa Rica. The result is an account that is bound to fascinate and surprise, because the behavior of wild capuchins exceeds our wildest imagination.

Frans de Waal

Capuchins are no regular monkeys. They have huge brains, and seem about as smart and 'cultured' as any ape. I know of no better guides to their social life than Susan Perry and Joe Manson, who have devoted their lives to studying these often overlooked creatures in the jungles of Costa Rica. The result is an account that is bound to fascinate and surprise, because the behavior of wild capuchins exceeds our wildest imagination.
— Frans de Waal, author of Our Inner Ape

Editorial Reviews

Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson‘s book reveals capuchins as having social lives as rich and as complex as those...of humans...Perry‘s book, with her husband and research partner, is far more than just stories about monkeys’ social lives. It offers fascinating biology from Costa Rica’s tropical forests, including the small, somewhat ugly, Machiavellian capuchin monkeys. They act as the focus for a discourse that ranges over “big questions”: why evolve large brains and intelligence; how do youngsters learn group-typical behavior; why does lethal aggression occur? These questions are embedded in the human drama of fieldwork; snakes, bugs of all kinds, plants with deadly toxicity, ill-fated collaborations, deep friendships and human poachers...We desperately need such studies to be sustained. Let’s hope this fascinating book will go some way towards achieving this aim.

Times Higher Education Supplement - Phyllis C. Lee

Capuchins are no regular monkeys. They have huge brains, and seem about as smart and 'cultured' as any ape. I know of no better guides to their social life than Susan Perry and Joe Manson, who have devoted their lives to studying these often overlooked creatures in the jungles of Costa Rica. The result is an account that is bound to fascinate and surprise, because the behavior of wild capuchins exceeds our wildest imagination.

Frans de Waal

Capuchins are no regular monkeys. They have huge brains, and seem about as smart and 'cultured' as any ape. I know of no better guides to their social life than Susan Perry and Joe Manson, who have devoted their lives to studying these often overlooked creatures in the jungles of Costa Rica. The result is an account that is bound to fascinate and surprise, because the behavior of wild capuchins exceeds our wildest imagination.

Frans De Waal

Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson‘s book reveals capuchins as having social lives as rich and as complex as those...of humans...Perry‘s book, with her husband and research partner, is far more than just stories about monkeys’ social lives. It offers fascinating biology from Costa Rica’s tropical forests, including the small, somewhat ugly, Machiavellian capuchin monkeys. They act as the focus for a discourse that ranges over “big questions”: why evolve large brains and intelligence; how do youngsters learn group-typical behavior; why does lethal aggression occur? These questions are embedded in the human drama of fieldwork; snakes, bugs of all kinds, plants with deadly toxicity, ill-fated collaborations, deep friendships and human poachers...We desperately need such studies to be sustained. Let’s hope this fascinating book will go some way towards achieving this aim.
— Phyllis C. Lee

Times Higher Education Supplement