Macaque Monkeys Family Gathering Near Water Fall

Macaque monkeys grow up with their mothers and are often not familiar with their fathers. But they can recognise the paternal side of the family even without ever being introduced to them, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology. The researchers suggest that just looking at another monkey is enough to know whether they are related.

“There is some evidence that non-human primates can recognise facial resemblances between two other individuals, just like us,” Dana Pfefferle, lead author and post-doctoral researcher at Duke University, said.

“We found that the macaques could detect their own relatives without being familiar with members of that side of the family.”

Polygamy is a common theme in the rhesus macaque world. A female macaque mates with multiple males at the same time, making it difficult to identify the father of the child. Males are also known to change their social groups often, picking different partners in different groups.

A child may grow up having never met anyone from the father’s side of its family. Being raised by its mother, the child is mainly surrounded by its maternal relatives.

Pfefferle and her colleagues were studying rhesus macaques living freely on Cayo Santiago, a small island about a kilometre off the south-east coast of Puerto Rico. The island is run and maintained by the Caribbean Primate Research Centre and the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus.