How a Hurricane Brought Monkeys Together
On the island of Cayo Santiago, about a mile off the coast of eastern Puerto Rico, the typical relationship between humans and other primates gets turned on its head. The 1,700 rhesus macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) living on that island have free rein to move around wherever and whenever they please. Humans don’t.
The Cayo macaque population came to be in 1938 when primatologist and explorer Clarence Carpenter captured about 500 rhesus macaques in India. He and the monkeys sailed from Calcutta via Boston and New York to San Juan, and from there to Cayo Santiago, a 15-hectare island that had recently been leased to the School of Tropical Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico.
Lauren Brent began working with macaques on Cayo Santiago when her Ph.D. adviser suggested she consider going down to the island to have a look at the social dynamics of the monkeys. She immediately
