Credit: Dallas Levey
An international team of researchers led by Oxford Brookes University shows that black howler monkeys in Mexico not only remember where important events took place in their habitat, but also when to return to such locations.
The researchers recorded the behaviour of five groups of black howler monkeys accumulating over 3,000 hours of field observations at Palenque National Park, southern Mexico.
Expert fruit foragers
Black howler monkeys were observed navigating deliberately towards out of sight fruit trees that were ripening. Fruit is a desired food by many animals in rainforests so being able to anticipate when fruit is going to be available and where, is a great strategy to forage ahead of competitors. The monkeys selected a small subset of fruit trees with easy-to-remember ripening cycles - showing, like humans, a tendency to minimise information processed during navigation.