The behavioral ecology of the tibetan macaque
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Abstract
Mystery surrounded Tibetan macaques for a long time, even for experts. The species
was not identified until the last third of the nineteenth century, and nothing more than
its geographic distribution and external characters were known for the next hundred
years. It was long referred to as Père David’s macaque, a rather odd name in
reference to the French missionary and naturalist Father Armand David, who first
collected the species. Moreover, the current name, Tibetan macaque, is misleading
since the species is typically found in east-central China and not within the boundaries of Tibet. This is due to the fact that Père David initially located the species at a
place close to the Sino-Tibetan border of his time.
We had to wait until the 1980s to see Mount Emei and Mount Huangshan come to
light on the primatology map. This is where Qikun Zhao and Ziyun Deng from the
Kunming Institute of Zoology and Qishan Wang and Jinhua Li from Anhui University began to study the behavior and life history of Tibetan macaques, definitively
adding a new dimension to the macaque landscape. I still have the reprints of their
publications in my bibliography, some written in Chinese. The works of Hideshi
Ogawa, Carol Berman, and a new generation of primatologists soon followed. Now
appears this multi-authored volume entirely devoted to the Tibetan macaque. This
combined effort of two dozen scientists to review 40 years of research and present
new findings about a single species should be viewed as a celebration of the species.
It frees Tibetan macaques from the purgatory of scientific papers scattered across
various journals and collections to join the small club of primate species that are
honored with this attention. Many people would consider that brown monkeys like
Tibetan macaques all look similar. Although they do not have the immediate visual
appeal of more brightly colored primates, brown monkeys have different but equally
attractive assets. With their fiery gaze and prominent beards, Tibetan macaques are
no exception, and their adaptations and behaviors attract a great deal of research
interest.
Palabras clave
Behavioral ecologyCollections
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