Monkey

A friar’s namesake

Capuchin monkeys were named by 16th-century Spanish missionaries who saw the small monkeys’ brown bodies and white face hoods and thought of the Capuchin friars — the order of Catholic monks whose robes have a similar pattern. The order itself was named for the capuche, the pointed hood the friars wear. The drink cappuccino is named after the same robes (the brown-and-cream color); the monkey, the drink, and the friars all share an etymology.

Tool users

Capuchins are one of the few non-ape primates that use tools systematically in the wild. Bearded capuchins in Brazil:

• Use stones as hammers and anvils to crack open palm nuts. They select stones based on weight and material; juveniles spend years practicing.
• Use sticks to dig for tubers and probe for insects.
• Use leaves as sponges to scoop water.
• Apply leaves and millipede secretions as insect repellent (they rub millipedes’ chemical defenses onto their fur).

Stone tool sites used by capuchins span thousands of years — researchers have found tools dating back at least 3,000 years, the oldest non-human stone tool tradition documented outside of African great apes.

Highly intelligent

Capuchins are subjects of extensive cognitive research because they consistently outperform other monkeys (and rival some apes) on tasks involving:

• Trade and exchange — they understand the concept of currency, can be taught to use tokens, and exchange them with experimenters or each other.
• Inequity aversion — they reject unequal rewards. In the famous “two capuchins, one cucumber, one grape” experiment (Frans de Waal), a monkey getting a cucumber will refuse it after seeing another monkey get a grape for the same task.
• Mirror self-recognition (debated; some studies show they show self-awareness, others don’t).

Service capuchins

Capuchin monkeys have been trained as service animals for people with paralysis or quadriplegia, performing tasks like fetching water, opening containers, and operating switches. The program “Helping Hands” (now called Envision) has placed trained capuchins with disabled humans for decades, though concerns about animal welfare have led to a gradual phase-out in favor of robotic alternatives.

Many monkey species

“Monkey” is a colloquial label for a paraphyletic group — primates that aren’t apes. Major divisions:

• Old World monkeys — Africa and Asia. Includes baboons, macaques, langurs, mandrills, colobus.
• New World monkeys — Central and South America. Includes capuchins, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, marmosets, tamarins.
• Apes — humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons. Distinguished by larger brains, no tail, and certain skeletal features.

There are over 200 monkey species worldwide. Capuchins are among the most widely distributed and studied.

Use as performer

Organ-grinder monkeys — typically capuchins — were a fixture of European street performance in the 19th and 20th centuries. The practice has largely faded, replaced by stricter animal welfare laws and changed sensibilities. Capuchins still appear in film and television (the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean and Friends are both capuchins) but the welfare implications of trained monkeys in entertainment are increasingly contested.