ABSTRACT
In July 1999 I was sitting under the immense banyan tree in the central plaza of the Padantegal Monkey Forest in Bali, Indonesia, when the most dominant of the three macaque groups at the site began moving up into the trees and the terraced hillside above the main temple. Cautiously, the temple group we had labeled “group 3” meandered, tentatively, in to take their place. Ten of my twelve students followed the group, slowly walking behind the individual monkeys they were observing, madly jotting down notes and trying to avoid eye contact with the multitude of young monkeys scurrying about their feet and occasionally grabbing at their water bottles and dangling binoculars. Pulling out my notebook, I noticed the adult female we had named “Teardrop” trailing by about 30 feet from any other monkey. She had a white birthmark in the shape of a tear just below her left eye, and she always seemed to be set apart from the rest of the group. My attention switched to Arnold, the dominant male, and Short-tail, the alpha female, as they teamed up to take a cluster of papaya leaves and a prized half coconut from two low-ranking males. Then I noticed Teardrop again: She had sat down about 10 feet from me. A few staccato alarm barks took my attention as a dog tried to run through the plaza but was chased by the “boys,” a fluid group of between five and twelve young male macaques that seemed to always be causing a ruckus somewhere in group 3. When I glanced back to my right I noticed that Teardrop was sitting about 3 feet from me, seemingly staring at a leaf on the ground and absent-mindedly scratching her side. I scanned the plaza to get an idea of the groups’ spread and starting writing down the locations and noting the clusters of females and young. Then, I felt a slight warmth on my right thigh. Looking down I noticed that Teardrop was sitting right next to me, her left hand on my thigh. She was looking away—I held still. Slowly, over the next few minutes she calmly leaned into me. We did not look at each other, nor did we move, for about ten minutes. Then she got up, looked around, cast a sideways glance at me, and walked away. The author (Agustín Fuentes) with macaques in Bali. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315663128/54c3e972-826e-4738-9928-66a7bea73c91/content/fig14_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Photo credit: Devi Snively.
