Japanese macaque

Appearance

The Japanese macaque is sexually dimorphic. Males weigh on average 11.3 kg , while females average 8.4 kg . Macaques from colder areas tend to weigh more than ones from warmer areas. Male average height is 570.1 mm and female average height is 522.8 mm . Japanese macaques have short stumps for tails that average 92.51 mm in males and 79.08 mm in females. The macaque has a pinkish face and posterior. The rest of its body is covered in brown, greyish, or yellowish hair. The coat of the macaque is well-adapted to the cold and its thickness increases as temperaure decreases. The macaque can cope with temperatures as low as -20°C .

Macaques mostly move on all fours. They are semiterrestrial, with females spending more time in the trees and males spending more time on the ground. Macaques are known to leap. They are also great swimmers and have been reported to swim over half a kilometer. The longevity for the macaque averages 6.3 years, . However, they have been known to live much longer; males have lived up to 28 years and females up to 32 years.

Behavior

During feeding or moving, Japanese macaques will often emit "coos". These most likely serve to keep the troop together and strengthen social relations between females. Macaque usually respond to coos with those of their own. It is also uttered before grooming along with the "girney" calls. Variants of the "girney" are made in different contexts. This call also serves as appeasement between individuals in aggressive encounters. Macaques have alarm calls for alerting to danger, and other calls to signal estrus that sound similar to danger alerts. Threat calls are heard during aggressive encounters and are often uttered by supporters of those involved in antagonistic interactions. The individual being supported will support the caller in the future.

Habitat

The Japanese macaque is the northernmost-living nonhuman primate. It is found on three of the four main Japanese islands: Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. The northernmost populations live on the Shimokita Peninsula, the northernmost point of Honshu. Several of Japan’s smaller islands are also inhabited by macaques. The southernmost population living on Yakushima Island is a subspecies of the mainland macaques. The total population of Japanese macaques has been estimated to be 114,431 monkeys.

The Japanese macaque lives in a variety of habitats. It inhabits subtropical forests in the southern part of its range and subarctic forests in mountainous areas in the northern part of its range. It can be found in both warm and cool forests, such as the deciduous forests of central and northern Japan and the broadleaf evergreen forests in the southwest of the islands. Warm temperate evergreen and broadleaf forests and the cool temperate deciduous broadleaf forests are the most important habitats for macaques.

Food

The Japanese macaque is omnivorous and will eat a variety of foods. Over 213 species of plant are included on the macaque's diet. It also eats insects and soil. On Yakushima Island, fruit, mature leaves and fallen seeds are primarily eaten. The macaque also eats fungi, ferns, invertebrates, soil and other parts of plants. In addition, on Yakushima, their diets vary seasonally with fruits being eaten in the summer and herbs being eaten in the winter. Further north, macaques mostly eat foods such as fruit and nuts to store fat for the winter, when food is scarce. On the northern island of Kinkazan, macaques mostly eat fallen seeds, herbs, young leaves and fruits. When preferred food items are not available, macaques will dig up underground plant parts or eat soil and fish.

Cultural

The Japanese macaque is a very intelligent species. Researchers studying this species at Koshima Island in Japan left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to eat, then witnessed one female, named Imo , washing the food off with river water rather than brushing it off as the others were doing, and later even dipping her clean food into salty sea water. After a while, others started to copy her behavior. This trait was then passed on from generation to generation, until eventually all except the oldest members of the troop were washing their food and even seasoning it in the sea. She was similarly the first observed balling up wheat with air pockets, throwing it into the water, and waiting for it to float back up before picking it up and eating it free from dirt. An altered misaccount of this incident is the basis for the "hundredth monkey" effect.

The macaque has other unusual behaviours, including bathing together in hot springs and rolling snowballs for fun. Also in recent studies, the Japanese macaque has been found to develop different accents, like humans. Macaques in areas separated by only a few hundred miles can have very different pitches in their calls, their form of communication. The Japanese macaque has been involved in many studies concerning neuroscience and also is used in drug testing.The Japanese macaque has featured prominently in the religion, folklore, and art of Japan, as well as in proverbs and idiomatic expressions in the Japanese language. In Shinto belief, mythical beasts known as ''raijū'' sometimes appeared as monkeys and kept Raijin, the god of lightning, company. The "three wise monkeys", which warn people to "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil", are carved in relief over the door of the famous Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō. The Japanese macaque is a feature of several fairy tales, such as the tale of ''Momotaro'' and the fable about the ''The Crab and the Monkey''. As a monkey is a part of the Chinese zodiac, which has been used for centuries in Japan, the creature was sometimes portrayed in paintings of the Edo Period as a tangible metaphor for a particular year. The 19th-century artist and samurai Watanabe Kazan created a painting of a macaque. During the Edo Period, numerous clasps for ''kimono'' or tobacco pouches were carved in the shape of macaques.

Spoken references to macaques abound in the history of Japan. Before his rise to power, the famed samurai Toyotomi Hideyoshi was compared to a monkey in appearance and nicknamed ''Kozaru'' by his lord and master, Oda Nobunaga. This was a humorous jibe at first, but was later used pejoratively by Hideyoshi's rivals. In modern Japanese culture, because monkeys are considered to indulge their libido openly and frequently , a man who is preoccupied with sex might be compared to or metaphorically referred to as a monkey, as might a romantically involved couple who are exceptionally amorous.