Field notebook
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Field notebook
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Animal profile
Macaca fuscata
The Japanese macaque, or snow monkey, lives further north than any other non-human primate. Thick winter fur and a short tail suit it to cold, and troops range from coastal forest to mountains with metres of snow. It is one of the longest continuously studied primates in the world.
The macaques that sit in steaming pools at Jigokudani are not following an ancient instinct. The habit began with a single young female in the early 1960s and spread through the troop by observation, one of the best documented cases of cultural transmission in a wild primate.
Japanese macaques on Koshima really did learn to wash sweet potatoes, starting with one young female in 1953. The famous claim that the habit leapt to distant islands once a hundred monkeys knew it was invented decades later and contradicts the field notes.