After humans, no primate genus has spread as widely as the macaques
From Japan's snowy mountains to Gibraltar's rock and a Florida river, macaques range farther than any primate except us. They eat fruit, raid crops, pocket food in their cheeks and live under strict hierarchies. A high-ranking one may take berries straight out of a subordinate's mouth, and nobody objects.
The genus Macaca contains 23 species of Old World monkeys spread across Asia, North Africa and, through the Barbary macaque, southern Europe. Their habitats run from Southeast Asian rainforest and the arid mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan to temperate highlands in Morocco, Nepal and Japan. Some tailless species are called apes, a leftover from an older, looser use of the word; they are true monkeys. A probable molar from England's Red Crag Formation, dating to the Early Pliocene, is among the oldest and most northerly records in Europe.
Groups usually hold 20 to 50 animals, sometimes several hundred, organised around dominant matriarchs. Male rank shifts often, while a female's standing lasts longer and depends on her family line. Daughters generally stay put; young males leave and try to join other troops, and some spend years alone. Macaques mature at three to five and live 20 to 30 years. They are mainly fruit eaters, sampling parts of more than a hundred plant species, though a southern pig-tailed macaque in Malaysia averages about 70 large rats a year.
Their adaptability creates conflict. Rhesus macaques in Florida's Silver Springs State Park descend largely from monkeys abandoned when a boat-ride safari folded in the mid-twentieth century. Long-tailed macaques introduced to Mauritius eat native seeds, spread weeds and have pushed birds such as the pink pigeon toward extinction. Nearly all captive rhesus macaques carry herpes B, harmless to them but potentially fatal to people, one reason they make unsuitable pets. Managers are testing sterilisation; modelling suggests treating 80 percent of females every five years could shrink a population.
Their closeness to humans in emotional and cognitive development has made them staples of laboratory research, especially on vision, and heavy use is one reason the long-tailed macaque is now listed as endangered. In 2018 Chinese scientists cloned two of them, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, by the technique that produced Dolly the sheep. The Japanese macaque inspired the three wise monkeys, and the Monkey King of Journey to the West is often drawn looking like one.
Source: Macaque
