Primate Ethnographies: The Biological and Cultural Dimensions of Field Primatology

“Coo! Cooi! Cuii!” As I climb up the steep winding trail, I hear the familiar high pitched chorus of contact calls coming from the 236-member-strong Arashiyama B troop of Japanese macaques. It is a balmy autumn day in the first week of October 1983 in western Japan, and the sweet, fresh scent of the clusters of tiny orange Osmanthus blossoms fills the air. Above I can also hear Nobuo Asaba, the Iwatayama Monkey Park’s director, calling out to the monkeys with a hearty “Hoooi! Hoooi!” This ritual exchange is performed to encourage the monkeys to leave the forest and come out to the provisioning site. It is 12:00 p.m., the second of three daily provisioning times when sweet potatoes or wheat and fresh vegetables and fruits are spread out over the feeding grounds. This has been the practice here since 1955, when provisioning of the resident macaques—the only nonhuman primates native to Japan—was first started at several sites by scientists and local entrepreneurs.