Animal abduction: On Panama’s Jicarón island, biologists documented five male capuchin monkeys carrying at least eleven different infant howler monkeys—a behavior never before seen in wild primates.
Rise and spread: The sightings were remotely recorded by over 85 camera traps, which allowed scientists to pinpoint the origin and subsequent spread of this social tradition over a 15-month period. (See interactive timeline https://www.ab.mpg.de/671374/Capuchin-tool-use/interspecies-abduction-tradition).
Novel animal tradition: The research offers the first known documentation of a cultural tradition in which animals repeatedly abduct and carry infants of another species—without any clear benefit to themselves.
Research collaboration: The study was led by a team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) in Germany, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, Universidad del Rosario in Colombia and Ithaca College in the United States.
