Monkey Business

FOR years Arunachal Pradesh8217;s resident macaque figured only in local lore. But that8217;s a thing of the past. The stocky short-tailed...

FOR years Arunachal Pradesh8217;s resident macaque figured only in local lore. But that8217;s a thing of the past. The stocky short-tailed mountain climber has now been claimed by science. It8217;s been a hundred year since the macaque list was updated last and the Arunachal monkey8217;s entry has created quite a stir.

Fairly common in the villages of Tawang and West Kameng districts, its scientific name is rooted in its region8212;mun zala meaning the deep forest monkey in the language of the Dirang Monpa people.

8216;8216;I saw them first in Zemithang in north Tawang. They were foraging and grooming in the early morning light. It8217;s seeing something you have never seen before,8217;8217; says Anindya Sinha, honorary associate of the Nature Conservation Foundation.

Sinha8217;s partners-in-discovery8212;Aparajita Datta, M.D. Madhusudan and Charudutt Mishra8212;all associates of the Mysore-based NCF, first spotted it last year. This April, Sinha who is also a fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at Bangalore and is interested in the behavioural ecology and cognitive psychology of primates, went across to Arunachal and confirmed it. Their findings will be published in The International Journal of Primatology in August 2005.

NOT much is known about the Arunachal macaque. Whatever little is, it8217;s gleaned from local talk. 8216;8216;There8217;s a villager who told me that these monkeys search for mushrooms and that in the rainy season they dig the ground for earthworms. Now, that is unusual.8217;8217;

The team recorded about 14 troops of approximately 15 monkeys each in a 1,200 sq km area. 8216;8216;The threat factor is still to be assessed. The villagers here are mainly Buddhist, they eat yak meat but don8217;t kill these macaques for meat or sport. They kill them only in retaliation since they are crop raiders.8217;8217; But the Dalai Lama8217;s deep influence in some of these villages has come to the monkey8217;s rescue.

The Macaca munzala shares traits of the Assamese and the Tibetan macaque. In fact, there are also hybrids of this high altitude munzala and the lower altitude Assamese macaque that are found in intervening altitudes. 8216;8216;The locals have different names for all of them,8217;8217; says Sinha. They also have a name for a fourth dark, large and shy monkey that they call La Pra or Monkey of the Passes. 8216;8216;It could be the Tibetan macaque that has never been listed in India,8217;8217; says Sinha. Now the NCF team will keep a lookout for this high-flying guest. If they spot it on Indian territory, that will be another first.

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But there is a flip side to discovery and Sinha is discovering that too. The National Chinese Radio, he says, has a report that China too will carry out surveys for this species and find out if its organs have aphrodisiacal properties. 8216;8216;Of course, they say if its organs can be used, they8217;ll captive breed the monkeys but we all know the danger,8221; says Sinha. 8216;8216;It makes you wonder if the species was better left undiscovered.8217;8217;