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Monkeys in Thailand took up stone tools when covid-19 stopped tourism

Long-tailed macaques on the island of Koh Ped appear to have learned a new way to forage when the pandemic put a stop to feeding by tourists

By Michael Marshall

26 December 2023

Some long-tailed macaques acquired new skills during lockdown

Christophe Courteau/naturepl.com

Wild monkeys on a Thai island began using stone tools during the covid-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions meant they were no longer being fed by tourists.

Several other groups of primates use stone tools, but we haven’t been able to study the origins of this behaviour before, says Jonathan Reeves at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who wasn’t involved in the study. “We…

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