Monkeys can identify human hunters

By Ella Davies, Reporter, BBC Nature

Woolly monkeys can identify human hunters by their behaviour, research has revealed.

Poeppig's woolly monkeys live in the rainforests of Ecuador, Peru and Brazil but are vulnerable to hunting by the local Amazonian people.

Scientists investigating how the monkeys respond to threats found that they acted differently depending on the behaviour of humans in the forest.

The results are published in the online journal PLoS One.

Woolly monkeys are named for their thick covering of fur and are found in the rainforests of South America.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, all four species are hunted for food.

To understand how the monkeys responded to this threat, researchers from Imperial College, London, UK travelled to Ecuador to study the behaviour of Poeppig's woolly monkeys.

"We worked with wild woolly monkeys [and] presented them with a person behaving as a hunter, gatherer or researcher at two sites with differing hunting pressure," explained PhD student Sarah Papworth, co-author of the paper.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/22128404