Primatology Fieldwork: Trentham Monkey Forest

On the 21st of October, we went on a field trip for our Primatology module to the Trentham Monkey Forest. The Monkey Forest is home to 140 free-ranging Barbary macaques, endangered monkeys that originate from the Atlas mountains in Morocco.
Trentham Monkey Forest is one of the three parks in Europe dedicated to the conservation of Barbary Macaques.

The bus left at 7:30 AM and arrived at the enclosure by 10:00 AM. As we arrived, a member of the staff told us some information about the monkeys that they have and the biology of the Barbary macaques. The monkeys are divided in two groups of approximately 70 monkeys each, called the “French” monkeys and the “German” monkeys, since some of them come from the monkey forest in France and others come from the forest in Germany, respectively. The monkeys are provisioned with food, but they also forage for natural foods in the forest. 

Two monkeys grooming each other

We were separated in groups of three and we were allowed to stay three hours with the monkeys and complete our task. The task consisted on picking a monkey and observing it for one hour, using focal animal sampling and taking notes of its activity on the sheets that were given to us. During that hour, each member of the group had a specific job:

Observer 1 had to record what the monkey was doing at one-minute intervals. Each specific activity had a “code”: for example, the action “walk” was “W”, and so on. This is the task that was assigned to me.

Observer 2 focused on all instances of social interactions such as aggression, sexual interactions, etc.

Observer 3 did an instantaneous recording of spatial associations at 5min intervals: the nearest adult neighbour (sex and distance) and number of adults within 2 metres.

The monkey we picked was a large adult male, which at first the only thing he seemed to do was  to eat. For the first half hour my sheet was full of "Fs" for “feeding”. Then a female pointlessly tried to mate with him, but he did not seem interested. He spent the rest of the time sleeping on top of a tree.

Our monkey performing his two favourite activities: eating and sleeping.

The trip, overall, was very enjoyable; having the chance to see the monkeys that closely and observing their behaviour in detail was really worth it. I can truly say I enjoyed this trip and that I would really appreciate attending to more field trips like this one in my course.

For further information on the Trentham Monkey Forest, visit their website: https://monkey-forest.com/