News

Some of our regular visitors may have noticed that Living Links has recently undergone a change in appearance- after 15 years it felt time for a refresh! Led by Research Fellow Anna Redly, Director Professor Amanda Seed and RZSS Interpretation officer Krystyna Keir, the RZSS and University of St Andrews teams have worked closely together to design and implement a fresh, fun and colourful new look to Living Links.

While the work is ongoing and covers several phases, visitors can already enjoy the benefits of the new look Living Links so far! New flags lead the way up the walkways to Living Links, highlighting some of the similarities between us and non-human primates; problem solving, learning, curiosity, playfulness. The different careers supporting the running of Living Links, from keepers to researchers to technicians (and YOU!), are highlighted when you first reach the outer balconies, and will be a feature we focus on in the new Living Links theme.

Our bright new fun colour scheme can be seen throughout the building, inside and out. In front of the windows of the monkeys indoor enclosures we have spinning cubes and panels for visitors to meet some of our monkey faces, learn a bit about them and try to ID them through the window! These have proved extremely popular with children, so much so that we had to install quieter spin systems as the constant use of them was slightly disturbing the monkeys during research!

Outside there are information flaps on monkey behaviour, the ever popular primate family tree with linked information, and soon we will have some behaviour spotting panels and QR links to online monkey ID guides. We will have students running occasional citizen science research from here, asking for your help with one of our long running welfare studies, and we hope this popular task will run more regularly in 2024.

Exiting the exhibit on either side, the flags display a ‘did you spot us…’ examples of behaviours you may see from the monkeys at Living Links- and if you didn’t see it on this visit, keep an eye out next time you are at Edinburgh Zoo!

There are a number of new features still to come later this month, including a ‘join the team’ face cut out board and a special ‘Living Links through time’ highlighting the key people and research themes that have featured at Living Links over the past 15 years. We will also be gradually developing interactive citizen science games for a large screen that will be part of the Living Links timeline, highlighting the importance of getting YOU involved in future research!

There is room for further development with visitor feedback, so we would love to hear from you if you have any particular ideas of what you would like to see or do at Living Links and if you would be interested in being more involved with everyday science! Contact us at livinglinks@st-andrews.ac.uk with your input or join our newsletter to be kept up-to-date!

Written by: Dr. Blake Morton

We are very excited to announce that over the summer, four of our squirrel monkeys in West Group – Gerda, Jasmine, Orla and Toomi – each gave birth to a brand new beautiful baby, marking the most recent addition to our primate family tree here at the centre. Those of you who visited Living Links over the summer might have noticed these adorable yellow “fur balls” darting around their enclosure (with their mothers not far behind, trying to keep up!). The recent births have given researchers and staff an exciting opportunity to learn more about squirrel monkey behaviour. Here are some interesting facts about squirrel monkey infant development, along with videos of the new babies with their mums (click on the links to play)!

Within the lifetime of a squirrel monkey, which is roughly 25 years in captivity, a female can give birth to as many as 10 or more individuals. Typically, females reach adulthood around the age of 2 ½ years, and become pregnant soon after (usually by the alpha male of their group). After a gestation period of around 147 days, pregnant squirrel monkeys finally give birth to a single baby. Most births take place at night, and labour usually lasts around 1-2 hours.

Two of our mothers – Gerda and Jasmine – are over 15 years old, and are the oldest and most prolific matriarchs of their group. Collectively, these two mums have given birth to an impressive 13 monkeys, or roughly 70% of West Group! Orla and Toomi are 6 and 11 years old, and the daughters of Gerda and Jasmine, respectively. Although less experienced than their mums, with Orla having raised 3 babies so far and Toomi having raised 2, they have their mums there for guidance.

Like human infants, baby squirrel monkeys are born with limited motor coordination which, along with their eyesight, improves over time. As you can see in the following video, during this vulnerable stage of development, the babies learn to move around and explore their environment from the safely of their mums’ backs.

Exploring

Baby squirrel monkeys initially cling to the stomachs of their mums following birth, which as you can see in the video below, makes it easier for suckling. Eventually, the mother will move the baby to her back, where the baby will cling until the next time it needs to nurse. But don’t worry, baby squirrel monkeys have a strong grip to keep from falling while their mums jump between branches!

Nursing

After about 2-3 weeks, the babies will start to eat solid food particles that they find on their mother’s fur (that is, if she’s a messy eater!), or, as you can see in the video below, by cheekily stealing food directly from mum’s hand! Baby squirrel monkeys will continue to nurse from their mothers up until about 6 months of age, after which they are completely weaned and learn to find food on their own.

Scrounging

The four new babies seem to be growing quicker by the day. Now that we’re mid-way through November, each baby is showing signs of becoming increasingly independent. They nurse less, and instead eat more solid foods, like fruit, seeds, insects, and vegetables. As you can see in the video, they spend the majority of their time playing, exploring their environment, and climbing branches all by themselves.

Independence

Despite their growing independence, at the end of each day, both baby and mum will come back together to curl up and sleep. As you can see in this video, however, mum always keeps a watchful eye to protect her little ‘bundle of joy’. Clearly, a mother’s job is never done!

Tired mums

A huge congratulations to Eoin O’Sullivan who passed his viva yesterday. This means that Eoin is now officially a Doctor! This marks the end of his PhD journey, most of which was spent at Living Links.

Eoin’s PhD investigated Social Learning in children and capuchins and his thesis was entitled, ‘A comparative approach to social learning from the bottom up’. Eoin is particularly interested in mirror neurons – neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Eoin’s work was purely behavioural based on voluntary participation from the capuchins and children. Eoin is pictured here with his supervisor, Prof Christine Caldwell who presented him with a mirror in the shape of a capuchin. How fitting!

Eoin joined the Living Links in 2012 and was an extremely welcome addition. Eoin was always very calm with the animals and this was rewarded with a high voluntary participation rate. Eoin was a regular at Living Links for about three years and during that time he became very popular with keepers and researchers alike. He regularly participated in public engagement events and science communication. Eoin has recently been employed as an early career research fellow at the University of Stirling and we are sure he has a wonderful career ahead of him- we just hope to see him again soon at Living Links!

Prof. Andrew Whiten, Director of Living Links, hands Prof. Aubrey Manning a gift  to thank him for his services as Chairman of the Living Links/Budongo Consortium Board. Aubrey has chaired the Board since Living Links opened in 2008, and is now stepping down. Prof. Alan Miller, FRSE has agreed to take the chair. Alan was Vice Principal for Research at St Andrews at the time Living Links was being set up and has recently retired as Deputy Principal at Heriot Watt University.

Monkey medicine has always been a very popular research project here at Living Links. It features in our learning resources, we worked with the Edinburgh International Science Festival in 2014 to run an event called Wild Medicine and now our researchers have inputted their work into this David Attenborough documentary.

On Monday March 2^nd at 9pm Natural Curiosities – Curious Cures (Series 3, Episode 5) will be aired on ‘Watch’ (Sky 109, Virgin Media 124).

The first half of the documentary will discuss the amazing sunscreen adaptations that hippos have, and the second part will focus on how primates, specifically capuchins use pungent materials to prevent insect bites.

Watch our mini documentary below to see what smelly items our Living Links capuchins like to use!

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The Living Links staff and researchers are enjoying the youthful energy of the four newest members of the West troop of squirrel monkeys.

Loki was born in June and Norrisaur, Sofia and Gonzo were born in September this year. Loki has already been showing her cheeky personality by swinging through the enclosure and trying to get the scientists’ attention by jumping into research areas whenever they open the doors.  In fact her personality is what inspired her name ‘Loki’ is the Nordic God of mischief.

It is wonderful to see such enthusiasm for the research from the young monkeys, in fact Loki made her first appearance in the cubicles when she was only 3 days old when her mother Jasmine brought her in. There is no doubt in our researchers’ and keepers’ minds that she will be a keen student and participate well in our learning tasks in the future.

Some of our past squirrel monkey projects have involved learning shapes on touch screens, simple monkey maths and the use of food puzzle boxes. Keep an eye on this blog, our twitter account or now our brand new facebook page to hear more about the amazing monkeys and the research work.

RZSS Living Links Facebook

RZSS Living Links Twitter

During the Edinburgh International Science Festival we hosted an exhibit entitled ‘Wild Medicine’. The display highlighted research on how animals use the natural world around them to medicate themselves and/or prevent illness.

There was a stall in town and also activities and a trail in the zoo. Lewis Anderson successfully completed the zoo trail and was entered into a prize draw to assist in giving our capuchins their preferred medicinal item – Onions!

Today Lewis joined our team in delivering ‘wild medicine’ to our monkeys! All primates involved had a great time.

To learn more about animals using natural remedies see our short video entitled ‘Monkey Medicine’