The macaques () constitute a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

(''Macaca'') of

gregarious Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother w ...

Old World monkey Old World monkey is the common English name for a family of primates known taxonomically as the Cercopithecidae (). Twenty-four genera and 138 species are recognized, making it the largest primate family. Old World monkey genera include baboons ...

s of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The 23 species of macaques inhabit

ranges In the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament, the word ranges has two very different meanings. Leviticus In Leviticus 11:35, ranges probably means a cooking furnace for two or more pots, as the Hebrew word here is in the dual number; or perhaps ...

throughout Asia, North Africa, and (in one instance) Gibraltar. Macaques are principally frugivorous (preferring fruit), although their diet also includes seeds, leaves, flowers, and tree bark. Some species, such as the crab-eating macaque, subsist on a diet of invertebrates and occasionally small vertebrates. On average, southern pig-tailed macaques in

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

eat about 70 large rats each per year. All macaque

social group In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...

s are matriarchal, arranged around dominant females. Macaques are found in a variety of habitats throughout the Asian continent and are highly adaptable. Certain species have learned to live with humans and have become invasive in some human-settled environments, such as the island of

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

and Silver Springs State Park in

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, a ...

. Macaques can be a threat to

wildlife conservation Wildlife conservation refers to the practice of protecting wild species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often ...

as well as to human well-being via carrying transmittable and fatal diseases. Currently,

invasive species An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species adv ...

of macaques are handled with several control methods.

Description

Aside from

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

s (genus ''

Homo ''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus '' Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' (modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely relat ...

''), the macaques are the most widespread

primate Primates are a diverse order (biology), order of mammals. They are divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include the Tarsiiformes, tarsiers and ...

genus, ranging from Japan to the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India ...

, and in the case of the

Barbary macaque The Barbary macaque (''Macaca sylvanus''), also known as Barbary ape, is a macaque species native to the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco, along with a small introduced population in Gibraltar. It is the type species of t ...

(''Macaca sylvanus''), to

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

and

Southern Europe Southern Europe is the southern region of Europe. It is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is essentially marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of Southern Europe include some or all of these countries and regions: Alba ...

. Twenty-three macaque species are currently recognized. Macaques are robust primates whose arms and legs are about the same in length. The fur of these animals is typically varying shades of brown or black and their muzzles are rounded in profile with nostrils on the upper surface. The tail varies among each species, which can be long, moderate, short or totally absent. '' ''Although several species lack tails, and their common names refer to them as apes, these are true monkeys, with no greater relationship to the true apes than any other Old World monkeys. Instead, this comes from an earlier definition of 'ape' that included primates generally. In some species, skin folds join the second through fifth toes, almost reaching the first metatarsal joint. The monkey's size differs depending on sex and species. Males from all species can range from 41 to 70 cm (16 to 28 inches) in head and body length, and in weight from 5.5 to 18 kg (12.13 to 39.7 lb). Females can range from a weight of 2.4 to 13 kg (5.3 to 28.7 lb). These primates live in troops that vary in size, where males dominate, however the rank order of dominance frequently shifts. Female ranking lasts longer and depends upon their genealogical position. Macaques are able to swim and spend most of their time on the ground, along with some time in trees. They have large pouches in their cheeks where they carry extra food. They are considered highly intelligent and are often used in the medical field for experimentation. Adults also are notorious for tending to be bad tempered.

Distribution and habitat

Macaques are highly adaptable to different habitats and climates and can tolerate a wide fluctuation of temperatures and live in varying landscape settings. They easily adapt to human-

built environment The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human ...

s and can survive well in urban settings if they are able to steal food. They can also survive in completely natural settings absent of humans. The ecological and geographic ranges of the macaque are the widest of any non-human primate. Their habitats include the tropical rainforests of

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

, Sri Lanka, India, arid mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and temperate mountains in Algeria, Japan, northern China, Morocco, and Nepal. Some species also inhabit villages and towns in cities in Asia.

Ecology and behavior

Diet

Macaques are mainly

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat ( red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetaria ...

, although some species have been observed feeding on insects. In natural habitats, they have been observed to consume certain parts of over one hundred species of plants including the buds, fruit, young leaves, bark, roots, and flowers. When macaques live amongst people, they raid agricultural

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydropo ...

s such as wheat, rice, or sugarcane; and garden crops like tomatoes, bananas, melons, mangos, or

papaya The papaya (, ), papaw, () or pawpaw () is the plant species ''Carica papaya'', one of the 21 accepted species in the genus '' Carica'' of the family Caricaceae. It was first domesticated in Mesoamerica, within modern-day southern Mexico and ...

s. In human settings, they also rely heavily on direct handouts from people. This includes peanuts, rice,

legume A legume () is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. When used as a dry grain, the seed is also called a pulse. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for human consumption, for livestock fo ...

s, or even prepared food.

Group structure

Macaques live in established social groups that can range from a few individuals to several hundred, as they are social animals. A typical social group possess between 20 and 50 individuals of all ages and of both sexes. The typical composition consists of 15% adult males, 35% adult females, 20% infants, and 30% juveniles, though there exists variation in structure and size of groups across populations. Macaque monkey's premotor areas

Macaques have a very intricate social structure and hierarchy. If a macaque of a lower level in the social chain has eaten berries and none are left for a higher-ranking macaque, then the one higher in status can, within this social organization, remove the berries from the other monkey's mouth.

Reproduction and mortality

The reproductive potential of each species differs. Populations of the rhesus macaque can grow at rates of 10% to 15% per year if the environmental conditions are favorable. However, some forest-dwelling species are

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...

with much lower reproductive rates. After one year of age, macaques move from being dependent on their mother during infancy, to the juvenile stage, where they begin to associate more with other juveniles through rough tumble and playing activities. They sexually mature between three and five years of age. Females will usually stay with the social group in which they were born; however, young adult males tend to disperse and attempt to enter other social groups. Not all males succeed in joining other groups and may become solitary, attempting to join other social groups for many years. Macaques have a typical lifespan of 20 to 30 years.

As invasive species

Certain species under the genus ''Macaca'' have become

invasive Invasive may refer to: *Invasive (medical) procedure *Invasive species *Invasive observation, especially in reference to surveillance *Invasively progressive spread of disease from one organ in the body to another, especially in reference to cancer ...

in certain parts of the world, while others that survive in forest habitats remain threatened. The long-tailed macaque (''M. fascicularis'') is listed as a threat and invasive alien species in

, along with the

rhesus macaque The rhesus macaque (''Macaca mulatta''), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies that are split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally b ...

s (''M. mulatta'') in Florida. The long-tailed macaque causes severe damage to parts of its range where it has been introduced because the populations grow unchecked due to a lack of predators. On the island Mauritius, they have created serious conservation concerns for other endemic species. They consume seeds of native plants and aid in the spread of exotic weeds throughout the forests. This changes the composition of the habitats and allows them to be rapidly overrun by invasive plants. Long-tailed macaques are also responsible for the near extinction of several bird species on Mauritius by destroying the nests of the birds as they move through their native ranges and eat the eggs of critically endangered species, such as the

pink pigeon The pink pigeon (''Nesoenas mayeri'') is a species of pigeon in the family Columbidae endemic to Mauritius. The pink pigeon nearly became extinct in the 1970s and the 1990s and is still very rare. It is the only Mascarene pigeon that has not beco ...

and Mauritian green parrot. They can be serious agricultural pests because they raid crops and gardens and humans often shoot the monkeys which can eliminate entire local populations. In Florida, a group of rhesus macaques inhabit Silver Springs State Park. Humans often feed them, which may alter their movement and keep them close to the river on weekends where high human traffic is present. The monkeys can become aggressive toward humans, and also carry potentially fatal human diseases, including the

herpes B virus B-virus (''Macacine alphaherpesvirus 1''; McHV-1; formerly ''Macacine herpesvirus 1'', ''Cercopithecine herpesvirus 1'', CHV-1), ''Herpesvirus simiae'', or ''Herpes virus B'' is the ''Simplexvirus'' infecting macaque monkeys. B virus is very sim ...

Relations with humans

Several species of macaque are used extensively in

animal testing Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and ''in vivo'' testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the behavior or biological system under study. This ...

, particularly in the

neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...

visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum refl ...

and the

visual system The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight ...

. Nearly all (73–100%) pet and captive rhesus macaques are carriers of the

. This

virus A virus is a wikt:submicroscopic, submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and ...

is harmless to macaques, but infections of humans, while rare, are potentially fatal, a risk that makes macaques unsuitable as pets. Urban performing macaques also carried simian foamy virus, suggesting they could be involved in the species-to-species jump of similar retroviruses to humans.

Population control

Management techniques have historically been controversial, and public disapproval can hinder control efforts. Previously, efforts to remove macaque individuals were met with public resistance. One management strategy that is currently being explored is that of sterilization. Natural resource managers are being educated by scientific studies in the proposed strategy. Effectiveness of this strategy is estimated to succeed in keeping populations in check. For example, if 80% of females are sterilized every five years, or 50% every two years, it could effectively reduce the population. Other control strategies include planting specific trees to provide protection to native birds from macaque predation, live trapping, and the vaccine porcine zona pellucida (PZP), which causes infertility in females.

Cloning

In January 2018, scientists in China reported in the journal '' Cell'' the first creation of two crab-eating macaque clones, named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using somatic cell nuclear transfer – the same method that produced Dolly the sheep.

Species

As of 2005, the authors of '' Mammal Species of the World'' recognized the following species and species groups, aside from the white-cheeked macaque, which was described in 2015. Later studies disputed some of these species groupings. For example, Li et al., based on DNA testing, do not recognize the ''M. fascularis'' group. Rather, they place the crab-eating macaque within the ''M. mulatta'' group and the stump-tailed macaque within the ''M. sinica'' group.

Prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

(

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

) species: * '' M. anderssoni'' Schlosser, 1924 * '' M. jiangchuanensis'' Pan et al., 1992 * '' M. libyca'' Stromer, 1920 * '' M. majori'' Schaub & Azzaroli in Comaschi Caria, 1969 (sometimes included in ''M. sylvanus'') * '' M. florentina'' Cocchi, 1872

In Popular Culture

In the television show '' Leave it to Beaver'' (S3:E29), the plot features a pet Macaque named Stanley in a prominent role.

Gallery

File:Macaca arctoides.png, Stump-tailed macaques (''M. arctoides'') File:Jigokudani hotspring in Nagano Japan 001.jpg, Japanese macaques (''M. fuscata'') bathing in a

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

in Nagano File:Macaca nemestrina.jpg, A male northern pig-tailed macaque (''M. leonina'') File:Crested Black Macaque (Macaca nigra).jpg, A crested black macaque (''M. nigra'') File:Macaca_fuscata.jpg, A Japanese macaque (''M. fuscata'') File:Macaques_in_Sagano.jpg, Japanese macaques (''M. fuscata'') in Sagano File:Macaca sinica aurifrons - Wetzone subspecies.jpg, A toque macaque (''M. sinica'') in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

File:Happy Long Tailed Macaques At Pantai Kelanang Beach, Malaysia 02.jpg, Long-tailed macaques in Malaysia File:Macaque showing the middle finger.jpg, A macaque in Indonesia showing the middle finger

References

External links

Macaque Monkey Brain Atlas

Primate Info Net ''Macaca'' Factsheets
{{Authority control .01 Primates of Africa Primates of Asia Tool-using mammals