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The Kakamega Monkey Project is one of the longest continuously running studies of wild primates in the world. It was established in western Kenya in 1979 by Dr. Marina Cords to study the behavior and biology of blue monkeys.
Blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) are tree-dwelling members of the group of Afroeurasian monkeys known as cercopithecines. This group includes familiar faces like baboons, macaques, and vervet monkeys. Over many decades, the Kakamega Monkey Project has examined questions such as how blue monkeys associate with other primate species, how they strategize to reproduce, and the nature and consequences of friendship.
By the early 1990s, Dr. Cords had habituated two blue monkey social groups. These two groups have grown and split into daughter groups multiple times, so the project now follows nine social groups. Routine behavioral data collection on all adult females began in 2006. Over the decades, students from both Kenya and abroad have received training and contributed to research with the Kakamega Monkey Project.
In May 2024, the Kakamega Monkey Project received a Leakey Foundation Primate Research Fund grant. These grant funds will help the project bridge two generations of leadership as Drs. Nic Thompson González and Stephanie Fox (UC Santa Barbara) transition into roles as project co-directors. Along with continuing the highly successful behavioral and demographic data collection protocol, they plan to begin year-round collection of non-invasive urine and feces samples. These samples will help researchers gain insight into how blue monkeys’ life stages and behavior align with their health, reproduction, energetics, and stress.
Questions and answers with Nic Thompson González and Stephanie Fox
Q: How did you become interested in studying primates? Did you like science as a child, or did you come to it later?
Nic: I was captivated by dinosaur books as a kid and was set on becoming a paleontologist – and a vegetarian hacker, thanks to Lex from Jurassic Park. In high school, I fell in love with a mix of human behavior (from language and literature classes) and physical sciences (chemistry and physics). In college, I took a course on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology with Dr. Walter Bock, a former student of Ernst Mayr. The idea that evolution shaped all life, including human psychology and behavior, was like a dinner bell. I found my middle ground between the sciences and humanities in evolutionary anthropology and was enamored by the behavioral diversity of primates.
Stephanie: I have early memories of playing ‘science’ in my friend’s backyard, where we set up a ‘laboratory,’ which mostly consisted of letting beans from the garden go moldy in different tubes. Inspired by a series of children’s books written by Jane Goodall, we also spent a lot of time observing the behavior of all backyard creatures, like ants and rabbits and chipmunks. As a young teen, I attended a summer camp at the Calgary Zoo where I learned that my camp instructor was studying primatology and we learned to construct a dominance hierarchy after collecting observations on the zoo’s gorillas. I felt like my eyes had been opened to the coolest career path on earth – I knew that studying primates was what I wanted to do.
Blue monkey behavior and biology
Q: What questions are you most interested in answering with your research and why?
A: Our current research questions focus on how age and experience influence sociality and fitness. For a long time in behavioral ecology, age has been a “control variable” where the “noisy” differences in biology and behavior between ages were removed to reveal true species-typical behavior. The way that sociality changes with age, however, reveals many fascinating things about how the current state of our bodies, social environments, and how our current priorities shape what we choose to do. Much about who we are changes over our lifetime and some of the ways we deal with our current state can leave us better or worse off. We aim to better understand these ideas in our primate relatives. Also, often individuals of the same age and sex have widely different experiences in their social environment, sometimes caused by differences in their status and/or their ability to access kin. We aim to understand how different experiences translate into differential health, reproduction, and survival.
Q: How does research on the behavior and biology of blue monkeys help us understand human evolution?
Many aspects of the environment that have shaped monkeys’ behavior and biology have also shaped humans’ behavior over the many generations and different environments our ancestors lived in. Understanding human behavior from an evolutionary perspective helps us explain our place in the world and understand the short—and long-term “why” questions about how we act, think, and look.
Leakey Foundation grant support
Q: How did you feel when you learned about your Leakey Foundation Primate Research Fund grant?
A: We were both privileged to be supported by The Leakey Foundation as doctoral students, and we are thrilled to have continued support from such a cornerstone of evolutionary anthropological research. The Kakamega Monkey Project is central to the future of our careers and will be a launching pad for many of our trainees. Support from The Leakey Foundation is an acknowledgment of the unique value of this study system, the only long-term field site on tree-dwelling Afroeurasian monkeys.
The value of long-term primate field research
Q: Why is long-term primate field research important?
A: First, long term data is essential for answering questions about individuals over their lifetimes, between generations, and how individuals respond to changes in their environments. Long-term data can provide a natural experiment in which things like group size, group composition, and habitats change over time. This helps us to understand their influences on biology and behavior. After years of population growth and group fissions, the KMP now studies nine social groups of various sizes. Data like those collected by the Kakamega Monkey Project also allow us to understand how individuals’ previous and/or cumulative experiences influence important outcomes, like health, reproduction, and survival.
Q: Why are continuity and teamwork important for field research projects like yours?
A: The Kakamega Monkey Project is the child of Marina Cords and would have fizzled out long ago without her decades of commitment and work to monitor these animals rigorously and systematically. The life of the project has also depended on its extremely talented long-term field assistants, including Eric Widava, Joyce Munayi, Dero Shilabiga, and Ernest Shikanga. Our generation of primatologists owes our forebears a debt of gratitude for their foresight of the value of long-term field sites and their incredibly hard work to sustain them. We are ready to carry the torch. Over the coming years, Nic will focus on recruiting graduate students who have a keen interest in working with the project.
