Monkey Life at the Sanctuary

The Monkey Sanctuary offers a stimulating learning experience about primates in captivity – but also of how they would be living in the wild. There are experienced keepers sharing their primate knowledge with you face-to-face throughout the day, there is a brand new interactive display room onsite as well as information about various primate topics, particularly on how we can all help to protect and conserve primates in the wild. The Sanctuary is home to a colony of woolly monkeys and a growing number of ex-pet capuchins. When you are visiting you will be able to see some of them!

The woolly monkeys move around in a large territory of interlinked enclosures and you will see them move through runways over your head. Try to see if you can spot them all!

The capuchin monkeys live in a Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, further up the hill from Murrayton house. Many of the capuchins have been brought here from lonely and inadequate conditions as pets, which have left them with psychological problems. Because of this, most of them are unable to cope with constant human presence around the enclosures. If you want to get to know them you should listen out for the scheduled keeper talks at the Rescue Centre!

Woolly monkeys all around you

At the Sanctuary you will find yourself surrounded by overhead runways and enclosures that the woolly monkeys regard as their territory. Woolly monkeys are the second largest of the South American primates. They are native to the Amazon rainforest where they live their entire lives in the tree tops, feeding, sleeping and traveling above the ground with the help of strong arms, grasping feet and powerful prehensile tails.  The woolly monkeys at the Sanctuary are 3rd to 5th generation descendants of animals that were rescued from the pet trade in the 1960’s and 70’s. During the 1960’s the monkeys gradually regained their natural social skills and learnt how to raise their young, communicate and organise their hierarchy as they would have done in the wild. The monkeys you will find here toady have all been born and raised by other monkeys at the Sanctuary. Having never been handled by humans and because they are having their own intricate relationships within the colony, these monkeys are acting quite naturally - patrolling their territory and paying us humans as little attention as they possibly can. However, from time to time you will see the big males shaking the mesh and making noisy demonstrations to let everybody know where their territory is and to warn you about what will happen if you are found trespassing!  

For the past 10 years the Sanctuary has implemented a non-breeding policy and the woolly monkey colony is now slowly aging and declining in size.  Instead of up-keeping a large breeding group of captive woolly monkeys the Sanctuary is now focusing on rescuing other monkeys from the current UK pet trade.

Meet the capuchins during keeper talks

Capuchins are one of the most successful and adaptable South-American primates because they can live in a variety of habitats like rainforests, mountain forests and mangroves. Capuchins are very intelligent and survive in some areas by extracting food from sources other animals are unable to get to. They have been observed to manufacture and use tools to crack hard nuts, open clams etc. Unfortunately for the capuchins their adaptive and hardy nature, the ease with which you can train them to perform tricks, as well as their relative small size and cute appearance, has made them susceptible to human exploitation. Today capuchins are commonly used in laboratories, in the entertainment industry and as private pets. Since 1973 it has been illegal to import woolly monkeys into Britain, but several species of capuchins are still legally imported, having first been wild-caught in a South American country. There are also captive breeding farms for capuchins, supplying the pet trade with tiny infants, and even some Zoos supply the trade with excess stock from their own breeding programs. There is an estimated number of between 1500 and 3000 primates still being kept by private owners in this country, a considerable part of those being capuchins.

Since 2001 the Monkey Sanctuary has been re-homing and rehabilitating capuchins from the UK pet trade. Because of the capuchin monkey’s high intelligence, complex social system and long lifespan this group of monkeys compose a completely unique animal welfare problem when disposed of by their owners. Capuchins will live to an average age of 40-45 years and being a highly intelligent animal they will easily become bored in captivity and develop stereotypic behaviours, like pacing, rocking, self grasping or self biting. In fact, most of our capuchins exhibit some form of neurotic behaviour on arrival in our Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre. Giving the monkeys social stimulation and company is a good way of reducing these behaviours and have proven successful for a number of our capuchins. However, social integration has to happen very slowly since these monkeys have no previous skills in monkey behaviour, having been bottle-fed and raised by humans! To have these individuals on display for visitors rarely intermix with the Sanctuary’s aim of socialising them with their own kind, since many of the ex pet capuchins will rather attempt to interact with their human onlookers.

To live in a social group is essential to a monkey's well-being.  Group life provides them with emotional stability, security, friendship, safety and stimulation. It is only through being with other monkeys that an individual will be able to develop their identity and personality and learn the skills they would need to survive in the wild.

The Territories

Both the woolly monkeys and the capuchins have access to several outside enclosures as well as indoor rooms and huts, which are permanently heated to 21°C/70°F and installed with full-spectrum lighting. All the enclosures are inter-linked by runways and hatches, which allows the monkeys to wander around as they like within a designated area. This system, rather than one big enclosure, gives the monkeys the opportunity to spend time on their own and to avoid other monkeys if they need to, as they could in the wild.

Each enclosure is designed slightly different to the others to provide the monkeys with a variety of activities and all are furbished with ropes, beams and branches which are regularly moved or renewed by the keepers to keep the territory interesting. In the outside areas rotten stumps, long grass and piles of wood provide excellent foraging for insects.  The largest enclosure is of an open top design surrounded by 11 feet high monkey-proof fence. This enclosure includes two giant beech trees and enables the woolly monkey colony, and occasionally one or the other of the capuchin groups, to practice their climbing skills and forage up to 80 feet above the ground.

Feeding

Bowls of fruit will be going out three times a day for the woollies and twice a day for the capuchins. The woolly monkeys’ lunch bowl at 2 pm is good time for visitors to see all the woollies appear from around the territory all at once. The monkeys’ diet is balanced to ensure they receive the required amount of nutrients, and although the food they receive is quite different than that in the Amazon, it offers a similar range of vitamins, proteins and minerals. The woolly monkey food bowls here in Cornwall consist mostly of salad vegetables, such as leeks, celery, spring onions, peppers, apples, pears and different types of lettuce, whereas the capuchin food bowls also contains some soft fruits and nuts.  Sugar rich fruit, such as bananas, contain a lot of sugar and is quite bad for the woolly monkeys. Instead the woolly monkeys get wild picked leaves from the Sanctuary gardens every day.

The monkeys are not strictly vegetarians. In the wild they would eat insects, birds and birds' eggs if they stumble upon them. Here in Cornwall the insects are much smaller then in the Amazon, and although they do catch the occasional rodent or bird, we need to provide them with additional proteins. To do this, we give the woolly monkeys a 'monkey cake' each day that contains tofu on one day, eggs, nuts or beans on others. Both species of monkeys gets chicken every Friday, eggs twice a week and the capuchins get fish and meal worms once a week as well.

The food is spread over the territory so that all the monkeys can find a quiet place to enjoy it, without having to fight or argue over it. Sometimes however, the food is hidden on purpose to promote foraging and to keep the colony occupied.

Daily Care

Especially woolly monkeys are incredibly messy and fussy eaters, sometimes taking one bite of an apple and dropping the rest. In the wild this is a good thing for all the animals that live on the forest floor, following the monkeys around and eating the things they drop. At the Sanctuary it means that, before opening to the public, the keepers and volunteers have to enter the territory every morning to clean up after the monkeys. We call it the "routine". It involves two keepers who “guide” the monkeys out of the enclosures one by one, so that the volunteers can go in and clean and put in fresh food. Moving the monkeys is a serious job, as it would be quite dangerous to accidentally let an adult male enter an enclosure with people in.

Every day, four keepers are responsible for the daily care of all the monkeys. Besides feeding them several times a day, it also means finding them things to do and ensuring that they have a nice day. Finding ways to keep the monkeys occupied and entertained is called environmental enrichment and there are many ways of doing it. We try to promote natural foraging behaviours by throwing, for example, sunflower seeds around the enclosures for the monkeys to search for. Dead wood and logs are left in the territories and are great hiding places for insects and other tasty invertebrates, which the monkeys will search for. We also change the ropes and branches in the enclosures as often as possible to keep the territories interesting. Every day the volunteers will also create enrichment items: stuffed cardboard boxes, tubes or jars, “banana books”, “sticky-sticks”, frozen fruit or something else that will require some manipulation from the monkeys to be extracted.

To keep all the monkeys happy, it is sometimes necessary to have some monkeys separated from others. For example after a big argument it is good to have the different parties or families shut off for the night in different sections of the territory. It is very important for the keepers to understand the politics and alliances between monkeys, which change all the time, in order not to make the situation worse.

Health Care

Health care at the Sanctuary is integral to all aspects of the monkey's life, from the design of the territory and its maintenance, diet and food preparation, the keepers' relationship with the monkeys, the managing and enabling of healthy social group lives, to actual medication and veterinary care. For the capuchins there are often additional aspects of health care due to their previous lives as pets. Many pet monkeys suffer from neurotic behaviours, which of course are signs of an unbalanced mental health, but many ex pets also suffer from physical problems such as bad teeth, or even bone diseases, due to an inappropriate diet and a few of them have missing digits or other handicaps. For all the monkeys, no matter what background, we try to achieve the best possible health and give them the best quality of life possible.

All the monkeys are given daily vitamin supplements in the form of multivitamin drops; vitamin D3 is given to young animals and the ones with an elevated need (such as capuchins with bone diseases) to prevent rickets and crataegus tincture is given to support the heart and to improve blood circulation. Because the monkeys are living in the same territory all the time, as well as spending time on the ground, we have to regularly check their faeces for internal parasites and give them de-worming medicine when necessary.

Woolly monkeys are highly specialised animals who therefore find it very difficult to adapt to the unnatural conditions of captive life in Cornwall. Thus a prophylactic approach to health care helps to counteract the stresses of every-day life. In order to care for this sensitive species one must have an understanding of the social structure of the colony and the individuals within it. On a practical level this involves ensuring that the territory is interesting and appropriate to all the monkeys at any given time and that we are aware of stress levels in the group so we can take action to help the situation. Stress seriously compromises the immune system and the monkeys' ability to ward off disease.

Invasive treatments are avoided wherever possible and homeopathic remedies are frequently used as a gentle and holistic approach to a problem, offering preventative, constitutional and first-aid treatments, whereas conventional medicines are used when deemed necessary.

When you visit us you will get an insight in all these, and more, aspects of monkey life at the Sanctuary and in the wild!