Monkeys Are Curios, Intelligent, and Voracious Eaters

Monkeys are curious, intelligent, and voracious eaters that scour nature’s buffet for tasty tropical fruits, crunchy bugs, and much more. Whether in the wild or at a zoo, monkeys make great companion animals but should never be fed human food, which can make them sick.

Monkeys have a variety of ways to communicate with each other and they use body language, facial expressions, and vocalizations to communicate. For example, if a vervet monkey sees another monkey staring at it, it may flash its eyelids in a warning. It also uses a wide array of grunts, squeaks, hoots, wails, and moans to get its point across.

When a baby monkey tastes its first solid food—such as a leaf or piece of fruit—it receives a boost of the chemical dopamine. This surge paves neural pathways that wire its brain to seek out that food again in the future. A little monkey learns to pick the right leaves and avoid the ones that taste bad, even if it has no conscious memory of what those leaves were like.

Most monkeys live in the lush rainforests of Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Latin America or on savannas or rocky hillsides. Some, such as geladas and Japanese macaques, live in mountain regions where it snows.

Some species of monkey—including humans—are kept as pets, and others are used in laboratories and on space missions. Many of the world’s wild monkeys, however, are hunted for meat (known as bushmeat), captured in “monkey drives,” or killed as pests that invade farms or eat crops.