We have been asked how to repel macaques. Or rather, we have noticed that someone arrived at this website by searching for “how to repel macaques,” which we took as a cry for help. Unfortunately, there was nothing here about how to repel macaques. Nor is there an obvious site to refer the thwarted searcher to – nothing for Macaque-B-Gone, Macaque Solutions, or Macaque Motels. (“Macaques check in, and they order six of everything on the room service menu, and they trash the suite, but they don't check out!”) We hate to disappoint people who are nice enough to read the blog, so we're trying to catch up.
There's no way to know where these macaques are. Are they the macaques who hustle tourists on the Rock of Gibraltar? (Macaca sylvanus.) Are they the crab-eating macaques who raid the nests of endangered birds on Mauritius (where fools introduced them)? (M. fascicularis,) Or are they Japanese snow monkeys again (M. fuscata), invading someone's jacuzzi. So we'll have to take a broad-based approach.
No violent methods will be recommended – most macaques are protected. We reject violence. We prefer threats of violence.
Many primates have a threat display which consists of yawning widely, showing all one's fearsome teeth. It's not just that they're bored. They yawn more when they're not alone, males yawn more than females, and teenage males start yawning all the time. Macaques yawn more if some meddlesome scientist shoots them up with androgens (steroid hormones like testosterone). In the wild, male baboons yawn less if there's another male around with better, scarier teeth.
Photograph, Ryan E. Poplin.
This is why monkeys treat us with disrespect. We have puny teeth.
So for all your macaque-repelling needs, we say Think Teeth. Try the costume supply store and the fake Dracula teeth. Go for the biggest fangs available. Flash those macaques a big toothy smile. That should make them step back. Beam at them, letting the light glint off your canines. They'll start darting their eyes around, looking for an escape route. Say, “Are you as tired as I am, my furry little friend?” and do a long, huge yawn. Watch them flee.
What if macaques invade while your back is turned, when you're at work or out of town? Try leaving a great white shark's jaw on top of the fence post. Put big Jaws posters on the wall. (Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if just as the macaque is sneaking toward your refrigerator, one of those sets of chattering wind-up teeth comes hopping out? Rig up something like that! Send us the video!)
These methods are untested. Here at The Nature of the Beast, we have no macaques to repel. But we hope, intrepid searcher, that we have given you some useful ideas.
One thing, searcher. We advise against any effort to trap your macaques. As anyone knows who has trapped unwanted mice, relocation can be extremely problematic. They say that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. If you build a better monkey trap, you'll have a trap full of furious monkeys, and the world may beat a path to your door in the form of angry mobs of animal rights defenders waving pitchforks. And showing the big teeth may not work on them.
i feel you are sound on macaque-riddance.
Posted by: marjorie | July 24, 2008 at 08:40 AM
It might work, although it's just as possible some male macaque will decide you're threatening his family and go straight for your throat.
Also, most yawning animals (or smiling ones) are showing their teeth, but when baboons yawn, so I'm told, they're just yawning... when they get P.O.'d, they blink very fast -- their eyelids are white and it's like flashing a light. Once the fight is joined, they will show teeth to each other, but by then they're making such combative roars and growls, you really don't need to watch for a yawn to catch on. I love baboons, but THEY ARE SCARY when they get angry.
Oh, also, MOST animals are showing threat when they smile, except for wolves or dogs. When canids smile, it's because they're having a good time and are happy. Check the news footage of huskies when they start the Iditarod Race -- they always have film of that -- all the little huskies wearing booties smiling and happy. When a canid is angry, it will growl and snarl and they curl up their lips like an Elvis impersonator. So when your dog is smiling, it's 'cause he or she is having fun. And when domestic cats yawn, they're just tired, maybe they had to get by with only 14 or 15 hours of sleep that day.
Posted by: Saintperle | July 24, 2008 at 10:21 AM
You're right that sometimes a yawn is just a yawn. It's also a good point that it's risky to seem too threatening. That's the tactful thing about a yawn – it's deniable. “No, no, that wasn't directed at you, I was just yawning. I'm so sleepy, for some reason...” So it's best to look off to the side while yawning.
The evidence that baboons also use yawns as displays is pretty good. Craig Packer's observations of wild male baboons are interesting. For example, males with worn or broken teeth yawn less than males with good teeth – but if they're the only males around, they yawn just as much. (“Male Dominance and Reproductive Activity,” Anim. Beh. 27: 37—45; 1979.)
The eyelid-flashing signal is one of those signals that usually goes right over the heads of humans, since it's not in our repertoire. In Ethology class in college, where they told us about this, my classmate Kristi and I had a plan to paint our eyelids white and simultaneously blink at the professor when he annoyed us, but sadly we never got around to it. (Kristi Mall Naelapaa Puusepp, where are you?)
Your compassion for the way cats never get enough sleep is admirable. Why SHOULD they smile? Though I would consider trading the ability to smile for the ability to purr.
Posted by: Susan McCarthy | July 24, 2008 at 01:47 PM
You're right -- I said it sloppily -- SOMETIMES baboons are JUST yawning (even as sometimes a cigar may be just a cigar)
And while humans don't consciously recognize some signals (as eyelid blinking) they often pick up things like that on a level below conscious recognition.
A wonderful man, the late Hal Markowitz, specialized in behavior of captive animals, and took a lot of crap from other zoologists for it -- they didn't recognize captive animals as actually HAVING behavior. Anyway, once he told me how he'd gone to work at his office at SF State, as always, saying Hi and Howdy to everyone he knew, smiling and handshaking and shoulder touching and etc and doing everything BUT waggling his eyebrows up and down to emphasize what he was saying. Told me that by the end of the day, most of the others approached him quietly and asked "Are you mad at me? Did I do something to offend you?" None of them could identify WHAT IT WAS that made them feel uneasy.
As to cats, the cartoonist R.O. Blechman once presented a basic truth when he drew the levels of evolution on a flight of stairs, from single-cells through reptiles and birds and mammals and primates, each one another step up, finally reaching humans... but one more step up, on the top of the steps, just above the human -- was the crown of creation -- a cat, sleeping.
Posted by: Saintperle | July 24, 2008 at 07:39 PM
That's a great story about Hal Markowitz. (I must try that the next time I want to make people think I'm disturbingly weird.) I had the pleasure of meeting him a few times during his brief tenure at the Portland Zoo in Oregon. He had a system set up in which the gibbons could pull a lever when a light went on, causing a light to go on at the other end of the enclosure – if they went to the second light and pulled a second lever, they'd get a piece of orange. There were three gibbons, and after they figured it out, the father gibbon stationed himself next to the food dispenser, and just waited for his child to pull the first lever. The child would come hurtling hand over hand across the cage, but could never get there in time to get the orange.
Posted by: Susan McCarthy | July 24, 2008 at 11:09 PM