This monkey has a mirror shard in her mouth. Read on if you want to know what she was going to do 🙂

Do you believe that chimps are the only primates who use tools? If so, you are wrong. Macaques, who are even not the apes, do the same. I have witnessed this in 2017 in Thailand and taken images/videos which I am sharing in this post.

Monkeys Using Tools - My Video and Explanation

This video was taken by me. In the video, you can see a macaque breaking a sea almond with a cobblestone

In the city of Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand, I met an unusual tribe of wild monkeys living free in the city center, which is unusual for Thailand. The Web says this is the stump-tailed macaque, Macaca arctoides (although they quite resemble the crab-eating macaque, Macaca fascicularis).

Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand on the google maps

First of all, being on the periphery of this colony, I heard a strange mechanical knock. It turned out that several monkeys were breaking nuts (sea almonds, Terminalia catappa) with stones, mostly cobblestone they found in the street. I believed that only a chimpanzees used tools. It turned out, I was wrong. I checked the Web and found out that I wasn't the first person who witnessed that:

Macaques are the only Old World monkeys that have been observed using percussive stone tools and scientists do not know for certain how or why certain groups have developed this behaviour. The source: Macaques’ stone tool use varies despite same environment

Burmese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis aurea) are one of a limited number of wild animal species to use stone tools, with their tool use focused on pounding shelled marine invertebrates foraged from intertidal habitats. The source: Use-Wear Patterns on Wild Macaque Stone Tools Reveal Their Behavioural History. Check the article to see an image of stones monkeys use as tools and you'll notice they resemble the cobblestone in my video above.

I observed even more strange behavior. The macaques of Prachuap Khiri Khan break with stones not only nuts, but also pebbles! For sure, they can distinguish a stone from a nut. 😀 Perhaps, they just like the process... But it is reminiscent of stories about prehistoric man and his tools, isn't it? This fact makes me think that the Prachuap macaques aren't far (in the scale of evolution, of course) from creating tools - a broken stone can become an archaic knife... They have no flintstone there so they only create shards that can be used for nothing but this is a sort of not far from making tools. I think, if even they had flintstones, they don't have enough wits to use chipped stone to cut things... The habit is quite curious and makes me recollect an opinion that prehistoric people initially used to create tools based on the instinct, not learning.

Macaques and Reflection

Unfortunately, I didn't make an experiment with a mirror on them. But I had some interesting observations on that topic.

These macaques are used to catching something in the water. This species lives by the sea and eats everything they can find including shellfish (I guess). In Prachuap city center, they have a canal where I witnessed this scene:

The scene may make someone think the monkey watching its reflection (or watching mysterious "another monkey" in the water). But I doubt it was meditation, rather searching for food.

But I believe macaques are enough smart to spot "another monkey" in the water and get used to that fact. At least, I've never seen macaques feared or fighting their own reflection in the water as their monkey bros do when youtubers experiment on them making them encounter a mirror for the first time.

These would be just a curious photographs if not the fact that Prachuap macaques regularly steal rear view mirrors of cars... I manages to take a short video of one of these crimes:

This video was taken by me too

At the end of the video, a guard with a slingshot came running and the monkeys escaped. (Using such an archaic weapon against monkey that just discovered stone tools seems amusing. For them, a slingshot is like traveling at speeds faster than the speed of light for us 😀).

You can see these trophies in the hands of monkeys here and there in this colony, sometimes. For example:

This detail of a rear view mirror was on the tree for some reason:

Maybe people hung it? Or these monkey have already invented knitting knots? 😀 No way, of course. It's just... another mystery of the Prachuap colony of macaques.

There is a simple explanation for that mirror mania: the only thing macaques can steal from a closed car is rear view mirrors and its plastic details. At the same time, I am sure monkeys notice an unusual features of the mirror: they either think that mirrors show other monkeys or they understand that mirrors shows themselves. No matter what they think about mirrors - both variants are mind-blowing for macaques and both variants may be appealing for monkeys.

And now look at series of my photographs that prove that some the Prachuap monkeys might have a special feeling for mirrors.

Monkey with a Shard of Mirror, What Is She Doing??

So, on the edge of the colony there is a city government building. Macaques love climbing it looking for something to steal.

It is hard to do - people put bars and covered the windows with the black tape so you can’t even properly look inside.

So, the unusual scene:

A young macaque with a shard of mirror in the mouth climbing up along the wires...

A long way up ended and the macaque did the following thing:

So please someone explain me what this means! 😀

After a while, the macaque was bored and left the window. Probably, she didn't get what she wanted.

My opinion? I guess this was just a try. A try to use the mirror as a way of getting some stuff from people and this didn't work. I don't think there was much philosophy behind. Just a brave move, a spontaneous experiment driven by a sudden dim guess.

I had a thought that the insight that drove the monkey could be based on the idea that everything that reflects (like water they know well) can be a way to see through and to go through... Like water that reflects monkeys' faces but you also can see through it and you can put a hand in it to fumble at the bottom in the hope to find food... So... the monkey could feel that the mirror might have the same nature so she planned to look inside the building and maybe even put her hand through the window to fumble and steal something... Like this:

A plastic spoon, found in the canal, in the mouth, and thoughtful facial expression :D

Ok, this is just a fantasy but... the whole scene is very intriguing for me...

What do you think? 🙂

All images and videos were taken by me with a Nikkor 70-300mm on a DSLR Nikon D750 in Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand in March 2017.