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. 2022 May 13;12(1):7971.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-11776-7.

Cohort dominance rank and "robbing and bartering" among subadult male long-tailed macaques at Uluwatu, Bali

Jeffrey V Peterson  1 , Agustín Fuentes  2 , I Nengah Wandia  3
Affiliations

Cohort dominance rank and "robbing and bartering" among subadult male long-tailed macaques at Uluwatu, Bali

Jeffrey V Peterson et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Robbing and bartering is a habitual behavior among free-ranging long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) at a single site in Bali, Indonesia. The behavior consists of three main elements: (1) a macaque takes an item from a human; (2) the macaque maintains possession of the item; then (3) the macaque releases or hands off the item after accepting a food offer from a human. In this paper, we analyze data on individual variation in robbing and bartering among subadult males in relation to dominance rank. Using focal animal sampling we collected 197 observation hours of data on 13 subadult males from two groups (6 from Celagi; 7 from Riting) at the Uluwatu temple site from May 2017 to March 2018, recording 44 exchanges of items for food from 92 total robberies following 176 total attempts. We also measured dominance rank using interaction data from our focal animals. Dominance rank was strongly positively correlated with robbery efficiency in Riting, but not Celagi, meaning that more dominant Riting subadult males exhibited fewer overall robbery attempts per successful robbery. We suggest the observed variation in robbing and bartering practices indicates there are crucial, yet still unexplored, social factors at play for individual robbing and bartering decisions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Stacked bar graph presenting rewards received for each stolen item class among subadult males at Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Stacked bar graph presenting rewards received for exchanging stolen items for each focal subadult male at Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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