91É«ÇéƬ

Monkeys aren’t quite the aerial acrobats that we thought. Half of all Japanese macaques suffer the indignity of breaking a bone after falling out of trees or down a slope. Masashi Nakai of Kyoto University in Inuyama studied skeletons of monkeys killed by farmers in Nagano while the animals were raiding their crops. He found that 31 of 52 males had healed fractures, mainly in their shoulders, hips and vertebrae, while 26 of 55 females had fractures mainly in their hands and feet (International Journal of Primatology, vol 24, p 179). Nakai says that macaques rarely fight, and there was no evidence of bite marks or other signs of violence. More likely, they were the victims of their own ineptitude. Nakai thinks the types of fractures seen in males suggest they are more active than females, and have more accidents as they migrate over long distances and change troops.