Monkey knows how to teach children to brush their teeth

Learning how to clean your teeth is one of the first tasks in every child's life and the same thing happens in the world of monkeys.

A female monkey is teaching her how to clean her teeth with human hair.Photo: Xinhua.

Research Institute for Primate Animal Research at Kyoto University (Japan) found that many long tail macaque monkeys in Lopburi province, Thailand teach children how to clean teeth with human hair. In everyday life, monkeys still use human hair to pick up food in their teeth, but that time will double when they stand before the monkey. This shows that the monkeys intentionally teach children how to clean their teeth.

"I was surprised because we have always thought that only people can teach each other how to use working tools," said Professor Nobuo Masataka, the leader of the research team. He added that his research and his colleagues are at an early stage. In the future they will focus on observing the monkeys to learn whether the behavior of the mother monkey helps them learn how to clean their teeth or not.

Macaque macaque live everywhere on earth, from Africa to Japan. There are 22 species of long-tailed macaque, some of which are frequently used in scientific experiments. They are one of the primates that are of interest to science because of their intelligence and ability to adapt to their environment.

In the zoo, macaque monkeys are famous for the visitors' ability to poke fruit and to dab pale food into salt. In the wild, they know how to catch crabs, insects and fish. A recent study found that macaque monkeys also know how to brush a female monkey to be mated by girls.