Monkeys on Panama Island Are Kidnapping Babies from a Different Species

Jicarón Island is peaceful. It has no predators, and the animals that live there are mostly left undisturbed.

But when researcher Zoë Goldsborough checked footage from wildlife cameras, she saw something unexpected.

A male capuchin monkey was walking around with a baby monkey on his back, according to Videnskab.

At first, it seemed like a sweet moment. But the baby wasn’t a capuchin. It was a howler monkey. That’s a completely different species.

Goldsborough and her team dug deeper. They went through thousands of video clips.

What they found was troubling. Young male capuchins had been seen “kidnapping” howler monkey babies. Eleven of them. None of those babies survived.

The researchers first thought this might be a case of adoption. That idea quickly faded.

The capuchins weren’t feeding or caring for the babies. But they weren’t hurting them either.

They simply carried them around until the infants died from hunger or dehydration.

One of the monkeys, named Joker, was caught on video with a howler monkey baby riding on his back.

Joker didn’t treat the baby aggressively. But he also didn’t do anything to keep it alive.

Why would capuchins carry around babies from another species? Zoologist Petter Bøckman, who didn’t work on the study, has one idea.

He says that in some species, males steal infants to show off to females. But that usually happens within the same species.

In this case, the answer might be boredom. Life on Jicarón is easy for the capuchins.

They have no natural enemies. Researchers believe the monkeys may be curious or even amused by the small, helpless babies.

Another idea is that they simply think the howler monkeys are cute. People also adopt animals from other species.

Maybe these monkeys are doing something similar.

Still, the fact that the babies die raises hard questions. The researchers plan to keep watching to see if this behavior continues or changes over time.