RESULTS
Experimentation on bonnet macaques with peanuts and examination of
naturalistic foraging/feeding behavior in bonnet macaques, Japanese
macaques and vervet monkeys revealed a high expression of hand use among
urban groups (i.e., synanthropic groups) to acquire food which inevitably,
also have a high encounter rate of packaged artificial food. Conversely,
mouth use is relatively more prevalent among groups that are hardly
exposed to packaged food and subsist under natural conditions. Despite
the predominant combinatorial use of hand-mouth during extractive
foraging of non-hard food items by primates, relative prevalence of hand
use is maintained while deskinning a peanut under experimental condition
but only in the urban group. Similar to the trend of mouth use observed
in FA, even during peanut processing the rural group used their mouth
more frequently relative to other groups.