Phase One with the Red-tailed Monkeys

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 The past week was busy busy busy, but so fun! I definitely had a minor panic attack thinking that I was forgetting something, was going to mess something up, etc haha, but everything went smoothly with no issues save for some minor technical difficulties! Also, I am a freaking boss at assembling and painting small boxes now, so yay for new skills I guess. 😝

Those technical difficulties being that on my way to the zoo the first morning driving through Grizzly Peak, I somehow shifted my car into manual and had to pull over and restart the car to get it to go back to normal, my GoPro was being a total diva and not wanting to cooperate, my camera does not take good video, I accidentally stopped my stopwatch halfway through day three, and there was a minor learning curve learning how to use my voice recorder. BUT! I managed to solve all those issues. Funnily enough, despite all my more "high-tech" equipment, my best tool besides the voice recorder has been my old iPhone lol --- I am using it to record video of the monkeys' first 10 -17 minutes with the boxes. 


Darling photo of one of the Zoo's red-tailed monkeys I work with, by Steven Gotz.


I did four sessions of this initial presentation of the boxes with the monkeys, start times varied between 9:30 - 10:15 am depending on when the zookeepers came out to put the boxes in and service the exhibit. Sometimes the monkeys would already be in their habitat, and sometimes they would be let out from their holding enclosure after the boxes and their other food + enrichment items were put out.

I have pages and paaaggggeeess of observation notes with time stamps that I typed up from my voice recorder, but I will spare you those lol. I will go back over them and the videos throughout the summer. Hopefully I will be able to get some definitive answers for some of my research questions! Organizing all this data into something meaningful and sensical will definitely be a new challenge for me. 

Day one, June 8th, the monkeys were super excited! The largest male actually caught a box that Virginia the keeper threw toward him haha and tore into it immediately, rifling through the butcher paper inside, but it was a yellow one, and therefore empty. At 2:30 mins in, another monkey successfully opened a blue box, and by 7:25 mins, all the boxes were opened and the monkeys were having a grand old time chewing on them, shredding the butcher paper, and Ikea monkey seemed to enjoy licking the boxes like a popsicle. 👀I mean whatever makes you happy girl, lol there's a reason I am using non-toxic, preschoolers' Crayola paint! Don't think it actually tastes good though, and I noticed that during all the other sessions, neither she nor anyone else ever licked them again lol.

In general, it took the monkeys a little bit to figure out how to open a box their first time doing so. Lots of carrying them around too!

The monkeys revisited and played with the boxes constantly throughout my hour of observation time and were still coming back to do things with their battered remains when I left.


https://youtu.be/QCW30eFRfhc


On day two, the monkeys were visibly less excited about the boxes, but were much quicker to open them and get the treats inside. They definitely spent more time with the blue boxes, which is unsurprising seeing as they are the ones that held the food. By 4:00 minutes in, three boxes were open, the last one unopened was a yellow box that two monkeys had examined but chose not to open, so that was interesting. A few minutes later the last box (yellow) was opened. After that, they did not revisit the boxes as often as they had the other day and they did not destroy them as much as the first day. By the time my hour of observation was up, the monkeys were not engaged with the boxes and for the past twenty minutes, had only been briefly returning to interact with them.


https://youtu.be/EspdQjsitno


Day three, and the monkeys seemed even less excited than on day two, but were box opening pros! Only one monkey came out at first when their gate from holding was opened, but he quickly began to engage with the boxes. Even less time was spent on the yellow boxes this time, and the monkeys focused most of their energies on opening and re-examining the blue ones. By 5:18 minutes in, all of the blue boxes had been opened and thoroughly rifled through, and the two yellow ones that had been opened had been immediately discarded by the monkeys, rather than engaging with them a lot as they did on the first day. They did end up rather unenthusiastically opening those yellow boxes though (I really don't expect them to never not open a yellow box, they're too curious for that!) and so all boxes were open by 7:50 mins in.


https://youtu.be/yXrgg8jaZwk


On day four, I picked up some goodies for the zookeepers as thanks for facilitating the boxes with the monkeys for me. (From one of my favorite places: Timeless, a fantastic vegan coffee shop!) Sugary yumminess is always appreciated by people who work such long, hard hours! I know after a full day of volunteering at the zoo, I am super sore, exhausted, and my step count is through the roof at 16,000 - 20,000. Now imagine that everyday! I have definitely developed a lot more muscle during my year at the zoo.

Anyways, day four was their "best" performance yet. They were very quick to open the boxes, but elected to ignore the yellow boxes much more than in previous days. Blue boxes had significantly more attention paid to them. All of the blue boxes were opened by 2:43 minutes in (quickest yet) and all of the boxes were opened by 6:10 minutes in --- also the quickest yet! 


I have included my notes from this session below:

And the video from that session can be found here: https://youtu.be/IcmGvUlMnII



Bonus funny bit: I heard the red-tailed monkeys called all sorts of things other than what they actually are, but the funniest guest identification, was that they were gibbons!! 😂


A photo I took of the male gibbon Rainier at the Oakland Zoo, for reference, and because he is handsome and darling AF: 




I start phase one with the lemurs tomorrow! The red-tailed monkeys will be getting a 7-9 day break from the boxes now, depending on keeper schedules.

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