Monkey knows how to change his love service

During the monitoring of macaque monkeys in Indonesia, the scientists found that the males had to comb and groom the monkeys to be happy with them.

A pair of macaque monkeys in Indonesia.Photo: National Geographic.

Michael Gumert, an expert at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and a group of scientists studied a group of 50 long-tailed macaque monkeys in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia for 20 months. They found that the male monkeys often brushed their hairs and caught them before meeting them.

Not all male monkeys have sex after grooming, but statistics show that sexual activity in monkeys increases more than twice thanks to this activity. Specifically, the number of monkeys mating in an hour (on average) is 1.5. But after the female monkey was groomed, that number increased to 3.5 times.

The study also showed the number of minutes that a male monkey for grooming depends on the number of female monkeys present around it. The larger the number of female monkeys, the less number of minutes of male monkeys combing.

Many previous studies have demonstrated that primates brush each other in exchange for food or 'service' to care for young monkeys. But this is the first time scientists have witnessed the exchange of 'service' of love.

But what surprised Michael Gumert was that the female monkeys also groomed the male monkeys. According to him, it is very likely that macaque monkeys use grooming to maintain social relationships in the herd because these relationships benefit their children. But it may also be a way to reduce the level of euphoria of male monkeys. In fact, after being groomed by the monkeys, the number of sexes of male monkeys decreased.