CERCOPAN

Category: Cercopan, Conservation, Monkeys, Nigeria, Rain Forests, Uncategorized | Date: Mar 02 2008 | By: admin

Here is a blog written by Sagan Friant, a volunteer working on Mangabey research at Rhoko camp.

At day break I grab a quick cup of instant coffee and make my way downhill from camp and soon begin to hear the loud whoop-gobble call the adult male mangabeys use to announce their territory. The red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus torquatus) at Rhoko live in a 1 hectare enclosure within the forest and are all considered potential future release candidates. Back in 2003, 18 animals (3 adult males, 2 adolescent males, 7 females, 5 juveniles, 1 infant) were selected to be moved to the enclosure, on the basis of history, behaviour and health screening all conducted at CERCOPAN headquarters. Since I completed my masters research here in the summer of 2007, the mangabey population has experienced 9 births and the population has now reached 40 individuals!

Sagan studying the Mangabeys

Though they are provisioned, it only takes a few hours within the enclosure to realize how close to being wild these monkeys have become. The mangabeys are true opportunistic ominivores. In just a week, I have witnessed them feeding on a wide diversity of foods found within the enclosure. Along with the typical leaves and fruits, we have observed mangabeys digging for roots of plants and biting bark off the sides of certain trees. Many of the plants within the enclosure have local medicinal uses, which may be exploited by the mangabeys. Eno, one of the keepers directed me to a tree which the mangabeys were feeding on called ‘debrabure’, and explained that it is used in the village to increase fertility. Perhaps this explains the booming population! The mangabeys do not stop with plant matter however, as we have also observed them digging for ants, pounding termite nests in an attempt to break them open, and discovering and consuming lizard eggs.

When they are not foraging, these incredibly social monkeys spend much of the day grooming and playing. Over fifty percent of the population is juvenile, and these youngsters frequently wreak havoc throughout the enclosure chasing one another from tree to tree and swinging on lianas. Such roguish behaviors are not limited solely to the younger generations however, as adult and sub-adult males are quite active in their continuous attempts to maintain or improve their position within the hierarchy.

Young Mangabeys playing in the trees

Akposi, a research assistant from Iko Esai, has been observing this population since they arrived to the enclosure in 2004. He knows the mangabeys very well, and has been helping me to recognize all forty individuals- no easy task! Together, we hope to use the past years of observations to learn more about the behavioral ecology of the red-capped mangabey, a species which has been under-studied relative to other primate taxa. Additionally, at CERCOPAN we hope to identify which animals (as an individual and a group) are most suited for release back into the wild. Prime candidates will be those that exhibit the most ‘natural’ behaviors and whose family is well represented within the Rhoko group. Once selected, the proposed animals will require further veterinary screening, and with governmental and local permissions and adequate protection, we hope that these mangabeys can then become wild. Ultimately, we hope that the local forest will be home to completely free-ranging mangabeys that can be studied long term within their natural habitat.

Akposi recording data on Mangabey behaviour