Rhesus monkey
| Rhesus monkey | ||||||||||||
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Rhesus monkey |
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| Macaca mulatta | ||||||||||||
| ( Zimmermann , 1780) |
The rhesus monkey ( Macaca mulatta ) is a primate species from the genus of macaques within the family of vervet monkeys . He played an important role in the history of medicine, as the rhesus factor named after him was first determined in his blood .
etymology
The name Rhesus comes from Rhesos , a Thracian king in Greek mythology who fought on the side of Troy in the Trojan War . According to its name, Jean Baptiste Audebert (1759–1800), a French naturalist and painter, the name has no deeper meaning.
description
The fur of the rhesus monkey is brown or olive in color, the hairless face is pink or reddish in color. Its tail is around 21 to 23 centimeters in length compared to other macaque species. Males, with an average length of 53 centimeters and a weight of 7.7 kilograms, are significantly larger and heavier than females, which reach 47 centimeters and an average of 5.3 kilograms.
Cytology
The rhesus monkey genome is organized into 21 pairs of chromosomes , including one pair of sex chromosomes , within the nucleus . The full genome was first analyzed in 2007; it consists of 3,097,370,727 base pairs . The number of genes (initially estimated at 30,000) is still unknown.
distribution and habitat
Rhesus monkeys live in Asia, their range extends from Afghanistan via India - their main range - to southern China and Thailand . Feral groups also live in Florida and Puerto Rico . They are not picky about their habitat: they are found both in the lowlands and in the mountain forests of the Himalayas , they have even spread to large cities on the Indian subcontinent.
Way of life
Activity times and movement
Like all Old World monkeys, rhesus monkeys are diurnal. Depending on their habitat, they can primarily be on the ground or in the trees. They usually move quadruped (on all fours) and can swim well and cover distances of up to one kilometer. The size of the roaming areas and the length of the daily forays are very variable. Where they live and are fed in temples or cities, their roaming areas are between 0.01 and 3 km² and the daily distances covered are short. In wooded regions they cover around 1.4 km a day and the grazing areas cover up to 15 km². In mountainous regions, on the other hand, the areas can cover up to 22 km² and the day trips up to 3.5 km.
Social behavior
In their group behavior, rhesus monkeys correspond to the other macaques. They live in large groups of 10 to 80 animals, made up of many males, females and young animals. Females remain in their birth group throughout their lives, cliques of closely related females thus form the matrilineal core of the group. When reaching sexual maturity, males have to leave their birth group and often spend their lives in several groups one behind the other.
The females establish a stable, permanent hierarchy that mainly depends on the rank of the mother and becomes apparent, among other things, in better access to food sources. The ranking of males is less stable; the status of males is based on a combination of social and aggressive behavior. Aggressive behavior towards other males includes hitting, tearing the fur, pulling the tail and biting, but also threatening gestures. If a male is in the dominant role in the group, he will maintain it for an average of two years before being ousted by another.
The territorial behavior is not very pronounced: The grazing areas of the individual groups overlap and different groups often meet, which is mostly peaceful.
Rhesus monkeys communicate using a variety of sounds and gestures. Cooing and grunting sounds can often be heard, for example when moving or when one animal approaches another for grooming . There are also chirps to indicate a source of food, high-pitched alarm cries and threats.
food
Rhesus monkeys have adapted well to human proximity, and much of their diet can come from human sources, either through direct feeding or indirectly by foraging in fields, gardens, or garbage cans. They are omnivores, but they mainly feed on plant materials such as fruits, flowers, leaves, seeds, tree sap, herbs and bark. Their menu is supplemented by insects, eggs, crabs, fish and mushrooms.
Reproduction
The willingness of the rhesus monkeys to mate can be easily recognized by external signs, by an intensification of the red coloration of the anus and, in the males, by a significant enlargement of the testes. While animals that live in higher regions have a fixed mating season (in autumn so that the young are born in spring), there are no clear times for lowland dwellers. The gestation period is around 165 days, usually a single young animal is born. Not only the mother, but also other females in the group and occasionally males take care of the young, which is weaned in the second half of their life. Females become sexually mature at three years of age; Males are basically fertile at around four years of age, but only reach their full size at around eight years of age and rarely reproduce before that. Rhesus monkeys can live up to 30 years.
Predators
Rhesus monkeys are mainly killed by leopards in their western area of distribution (Pakistan, India) . But Bengal tigers and wolves also pose a threat to the primates. Young animals are also killed by Bengal cats or reed cats .
Rhesus monkeys and humans
Use and research
In Hinduism , rhesus monkeys are sacred animals. They can live undisturbed in cities and are often found near temples. As laboratory and research animals, they play an important role because of their ease of keeping, and not just because of the Rhesus factor , which was discovered in them in 1940. For example, rhesus monkeys were sent into space by NASA as part of the Mercury program in 1959 and 1960 . In 2000, rhesus monkeys were first cloned .
In April 2007, the result of the detailed DNA sequencing of the rhesus monkey genome was announced in the journal Science . It was the third fully sequenced genome of a primate after humans and chimpanzees . According to this, 93.5% of the DNA base pairs in rhesus monkeys match those in humans. The researchers were surprised that the gene mutations causing phenylketonuria and Sanfilippo syndrome in humans turned out to be the normal gene variants of the rhesus monkeys. A comparison of 13,888 genes in humans, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys also showed that 233 chimpanzee genes, but only 154 genes in humans, differ so greatly from the rhesus monkey genes that they code for modified proteins . This means that over the course of tribal history, chimpanzees have diverged further from the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans than humans.
Danger
In the past, rhesus monkeys, as well as other species of monkeys, were removed from their natural habitats in African, Asian and Latin American forests for research purposes, which in some areas led to significant declines in population. India alone exported around 200,000 to 250,000 rhesus monkeys annually in the 1950s, with high losses already occurring when they were caught in the wild, during captivity and during transport to the respective destination country. Most of the animals were sold to American research institutes, where B. for the production of vaccines against polio or in radiation experiments to test the neutron bomb. Reports of the "International League for the Protection of Primates" on these and other radiation experiments with rhesus monkeys, e. On April 1, 1978 , for example, on the effects of the atomic bomb, Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai completely stopped the export of monkeys after it had previously been reduced to 20,000 animals a year. Although rhesus monkeys are mostly bred for research nowadays, the destruction of their habitat has come to the fore as a new threat. In some areas they have become extinct or have become very rare (for example in southern China and Tibet), in India they are protected due to their status. Overall, the IUCN lists this species as low endangered.
Systematics
The closest relatives of the rhesus monkey are the Formosa macaque from Taiwan and the Japanese macaque . The three species form the mulatta group within the genus of macaques .
literature
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World. 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .
- Don E. Wilson, DeeAnn M. Reeder (Eds.): Mammal Species of the World. A taxonomic and geographic Reference. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean Baptiste Audebert: Histoire naturelle des singes, des makis et des galéopithéques . Desray, Paris, p. 62–64 (plate & text) ( gallica.bnf.fr - 1799-1800).
- ↑ a b Figures from Primate Factsheets
- ↑ MapViewer entry
- ↑ Gibbs RA, Rogers J, Katzen MG, et al. : Evolutionary and biomedical insights from the rhesus macaque genome . In: Science . 316, No. 5822, April 2007, pp. 222-34. doi : 10.1126 / science.1139247 . PMID 17431167 .
- ↑ Audio files of various rhesus monkey sounds ( Memento from February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Rhesus Macaque Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium: Evolutionary and Biomedical Insights from the Rhesus Macaque Genome. Science, Volume 116, Issue 5822 of April 13, 2007, pp. 222-234, doi : 10.1126 / science.1139247
- ↑ MA Bakewell, P. Shi, J. Zhang: More genes underwent positive selection in chimpanzee evolution than in human evolution. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104, 2007, p. 7489, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0701705104 .
- ^ Medical News. August 28, 1972.
- ↑ a b Hans Ruesch : Naked ruler. The undressing of medical science. Edition Hirthammer Tier- und Naturschutz-GmbH, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-921288-44-4 , p. 67.
- ↑ a b c Horst Stern : Tierversuche. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-17406-5 , p. 75.
- ^ Times of India . September 16, 1955.
- ↑ Horst Szwitalski: ... the next victim please! In: stern. No. 35, August 24, 1978, p. 17.
- ↑ dpa, March 5, 1978.
Web links
- KA Cawthon Lang: Primate Factsheets: Rhesus macaque ( Macaca mulatta )
- Macaca mulatta in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: Eudey et al , 2000. Retrieved on 9 May, 2006.
