Monkey Travels

Abstract

In the rain forests of Peru, a small monkey, a tamarin, no larger than a squirrel, lives in groups of about a dozen and spends most of its time in the canopy. It eats, travels, and sleeps in the canopy, apparently fearing predators on the ground and in the air above the canopy. The canopy, for the most part, is so thick that vision is limited to a few meters at most. Tamarins travel on the average about 90 meters before finding a sufficient quantity of fruit to stop for a feeding bout. They have about 5 to 10 such bouts each day, before stopping to sleep in the largest local tree. An interesting question arises as to how these tamarins find food. One possibility is that they use their noses. This is the central assumption for the model of this chapter.²

Well, little monkeys mine, I must go write; and so good-night. Jonathon Swift, Journal to Stella, 2 Nov. 171. edited by Harold Williams, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1948

Based on P. Garber, and B. Hannon, Modeling Monkeys: A Comparison of Computer Generated and Empirical Measures, International Journal of Primatology, 14:827–852, 1993.

We thank Prof. Garber, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois who studies these animals in the field, for contributing to this model.