Japanese Macaque
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| Macaca fuscata Blyth, 1875 |
The Japanese Macaque (Macaca fuscata), also known as the Snow Monkey, is a terrestrial monkey native to northern Japan. They are said to be the most northern-living non-human primate. The Japanese Macaque has gray-brown fur, a pink face and hands, and a short tail. They eat mainly fruit and vegetation, but are also known to eat insects and small vertebrates.
Japanese macaques are highly intelligent. They are the only animals other than humans that are known to wash their food before eating it. These monkeys are perhaps most famous for the amount of time they spend relaxing in hot springs during the cold winter months.
They are often the subject of Buddhist myths, and are thought to be the inspiration behind the saying "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." There are two subspecies and the average lifespan is 30 years.
They have a body length ranging from 79 to 95cm, with tail length approximately 10cm. Males weigh from 10 to 14kg, females, around 5.5kg.
Japanese macaques have brown to grey fur, with a red face and bottom, and a short tail. They are native to Japan, but an introduced free-ranging population has been living in Texas since 1972. Japanese macaques live in a variety of forest-types, including subtropical to subalpine, deciduous, broadleaf and evergreen forests, below 1500m. They feed on seeds, roots, buds, fruit, invertebrates, berries, leaves, birds eggs, fungi, bark and cereals.
Japanese macaques are the most northerly-living non-human primate, living in mountainous areas of Honshu, Japan. They survive winter temperatures below -15 degrees Centigrade, and keep warm in naturally heated volcanic springs.
Japanese macaques live in multi-male, multi-female groups, and on average, females outnumber males by 3.4 to 1. The females have a rigid hierarchy with infants inheriting their mother's rank. The males tend to be transient within the troop. Japanese macaques are diurnal and spend the majority of their time in the trees.
After a gestation period of 173 days, females give birth to one young, which weighs about 500g at birth.
Japanese macaques are classified as Data Deficient by the 2000 IUCN Red List.
One interesting point about these macaques is that when researchers studying these monkeys left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to feed on, they witnessed one female taking the food down to the sea to wash the sand away. After a while, other macaques started to copy her behaviour. This trait was then passed on from generation to generation, until eventually, all except the very old members of the troop were washing their food in the sea.