Episode 55: Monkeys Get Creative
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Producer and scientist Kevin McLean travels to an island off the coast of Panama where researchers have found an isolated group of monkeys with a creative approach to surviving in a challenging environment.
Links
These tiny monkeys have entered their Stone Age with a bang
First report of habitual stone tool use by Cebus monkeys
Habitual Stone-Tool Aided Extractive Foraging in White-Faced Capuchins, Cebus Capucinus
Video of capuchins using tools
Research presentation on social learning by Leakey Foundation grantee Brendan Barrett
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies
Claudio Montezo Moreno's biodiversity research website
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Meredith Johnson. |
| 0:10.0 | Humans have a big impact on ecosystems. |
| 0:16.0 | A lot of the time, that impact is destructive, but sometimes the worst kinds of human behavior can create an unexpected benefit for other animals and plants. |
| 0:26.6 | There are places in the world, like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, for example, where nature is flourishing because people can no longer go there. |
| 0:38.3 | The demilitarized zone is a strip of land that's about two and a half miles wide and 155 miles long. |
| 0:46.3 | It was farmland for millennia before it became a deadly battlefield, and in the decades since the armistice treaties, forests and prairies have grown back, and animals |
| 0:55.7 | and migratory birds are thriving. It's gradually become an unofficial nature reserve, and |
| 1:02.0 | scientists say that over 1,100 species now make their home in the demilitarized zone. The exclusion |
| 1:08.9 | zone around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster |
| 1:11.7 | is another example. On today's episode, we're going to another one of these accidental |
| 1:17.9 | nature reserves. Koiba National Park is made up of around 40 islands off the Pacific coast of |
| 1:24.5 | Panama, and most of the island's forests are completely untouched by humans. |
| 1:30.2 | The surrounding waters, which are also part of the park, provide habitat to whales, sharks, |
| 1:35.5 | sea turtles, and all kinds of fish. Some birds that have disappeared from the mainland |
| 1:40.9 | flourish on the islands of Coybo National Park, and there are mammals there that are recognized as entirely unique species, flourish on the islands of Koiba National Park. And there are mammals |
| 1:44.5 | there that are recognized as entirely unique species found nowhere else in the world. |
| 1:50.4 | Scientists love places like Koiba. It's a perfect natural laboratory where they can study |
| 1:55.6 | animals and observe animal behavior in a healthy ecosystem, undisturbed by human activity. |
| 2:02.4 | Producer and scientist Kevin McLean traveled to Koiba as part of a team to investigate |
| 2:08.1 | some very unusual monkey behavior. |
| 2:17.1 | We're at the end of a long dry season in Panama's Coyba National Park. |
... |
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