Monkeys kidnap babies of another species in weird ‘fad’

PARIS: A new trend is catching on among bored young male capuchins: kidnapping baby howler monkeys, in what scientists say is the first time animals have been recorded stealing another species´ infants for no apparent reason.

PhD student Zoe Goldsborough first noticed something wrong in 2022 while sifting through footage captured by motion-triggered cameras on Jicaron, an island off the coast of Panama. “I was very shocked” to see a white-faced capuchin monkey with a baby howler monkey on its back, Goldsborough, a researcher at Germany´s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, told AFP.

The scientists nicknamed the capuchin Joker because the small scar at the side of its mouth reminded them of the “Batman” villain. After reviewing more footage, they spotted Joker carrying four different howler monkey babies.

At first, they thought this was the “heartwarming story of a weird capuchin adopting these infants”, said Goldsborough, the lead author of a new study in the journal Current Biology.