A tiny monkey cuddling an orange stuffed orangutan,tugging it along as he wanders his enclosure, seeking attention from other monkeys, only to be tossed around and screeched at. These visuals have taken over social media with people identifying with his loneliness and taking to the comments to \u2018aww\u2019 at the baby, jokingly (or not) plan to kidnap him from his misery and wonder how zookeepers could let the seven-month-old Japanese macaque, Punch, be \u2018bullied\u2019 this way.<\/p>\n
Experts watching the events unfold say that at least a part of this can be explained by our tendency to anthropomorphise animals, pointing out that macaques\u2019 behaviours and social rules are different. \u201cMonkeys live in a hierarchical social system that is xenophobic.They do not tolerate any other monkey coming into their group; the immediate tendency is to attack,\u201d says Mewa Singh,a wildlife biologist and professor at Mysore University.<\/p>\n
Punch\u2019s ostracisation canpartially be explained by his mother\u2019s abandonment, with this bond being crucial to macaques\u2019 social development. Asmita Sen Gupta, a research fellow, SM Sehgal Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, ATREE, explains, \u201cInfants spend about two months in constant maternal contact, where they absorb lessons about social cues and interactions. As they begin to explore their surroundings, their mother\u2019s supervision helps minimise the risks of erroneous behaviours. By the time they become juveniles, this equips them with the skills needed to navigate complex relationships.\u201d In the absence of this guidance, Punch has to figure everything out all on his own. There seems to be some hope for him yet, as a recent video showed him being hugged by another monkey. Some point out that there might be something about Punch\u2019sappearance, odour or behaviour that may be irking others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tiny monkey cuddling an orange stuffed orangutan,tugging it along as he wanders his enclosure, seeking attention from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[167629,31048,18,19,17,167630,115936,133,461],"class_list":["post-358990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bannerghatta-biological-park","tag-conservation-efforts","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lion-tailed-macaque","tag-monkey-punch","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116142381684946885","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}