Monkeys Are Intelligent and Social

The word “monkey” is often used to mean any non-human primate, but monkeys come in many different shapes and sizes. They’re intelligent and social creatures that live all over the world, from the savanna-dwelling Barbary macaques of North Africa to the elegant langurs of India. And although we most commonly associate monkeys with bananas, they’re actually omnivorous, eating nuts, fruits, leaves, flowers, bark, roots, rodents and even insects.

Except for a few Old World forms, monkeys are predominantly arboreal—meaning they spend most of their time in trees. Their limbs are long, and four of their five fingers (excluding the thumb) have naillike claws to grasp branches. They travel from tree to tree by swinging, a process known as brachiation.

Like humans, they’re adept at problem-solving. In a recent study, researchers taught a group of monkeys how to open a plastic wrapper and extract a treat inside. The monkeys that did best at the task were those who’d been reared by their mothers, rather than in zoo nurseries. They ate more, took better care of themselves and needed less veterinary care later in life.

Monkeys communicate through a variety of methods, including facial expressions and body language. Burping, for example, is a playful social gesture among leaf-eating colobus monkeys—their chambered stomachs digest the leaves through bacterial fermentation, producing lots of gas. Then there’s the yawning monkey, a signal of fear or aggression. Other body signals include showing teeth (a monkey’s version of a human smile), and head bobbing, which can signify aggression or dominance.