System Two: The zoo story

One routine day after another.

That is, if you’re native to Punta – or Cayo – Santiago.

Mind you, Punta Santiago is a village on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, home to a sprawling local playa, a sincere personality, and unbeatable tropical zest. Cayo Santiago is a small island about a half mile off Punta, home to over 900 free ranging rhesus macaques…

Monday began with a spectacular what-was-supposed-to-be-7.5-mile run down Route 3, which takes you northeast along the beach and then inland into the heart of la Isla del Encanto.

There was a quintessentially Spanish pinkish red railing in Naguabo:

…some adorable stray cats:

…and, without fail, fiery Latin American politics:

What a run. At one point, I encircled a sweeping pasture so green and lush, I would have thought I was on a rainy Irish countryside were it not for the equatorial cloud forest looming ahead.

After what ended up being an eleven miler thrice the intensity of the Philly Marathon, I arrived home and rigged up some brunch:

Impressive, I know.

Brunch can be a pretty mundane exercise. The thing is, though, when you’re in a place like PR, routine doesn’t come easily. Obviously there are plenty of adventures to be taken and wonders to be discovered – that goes without saying. But, perhaps more importantly, when you’re somewhere different, and living there for a big chunk of time – that is, long enough that it’s natural to go to the store and make your own brunch instead of outsourcing it to five-star one-week honeymoon professional San Juan chefs – you get to experience yourself in an entirely new context. Imagine a three variable function: person times action times location. Multiplying, instead of adding, you get me doing brunch in Punta Santiago – something that’s never happened before in the history of the world.

I think that’s pretty cool.

But nothing to match these last two days.

The whole reason I’m down here, and not toiling in Sterling Memorial Library, is because researchers brought macaques from India to Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico in 1938, and, 71 years later, I get to carry on the tradition of observing their behavior and inferring what’s going on in their heads.

My area of work is called “comparative cognition,” whose goal, at least primarily, is to uncover the evolutionary origins of human traits. I’ve had the privilege of working the past 12 months in Yale’s capuchin monkey lab, and this spring I decided I’d try my hand at the Cayo field site.

Each type of monkey research has its own intrigue. A little time in CapLab, as it’s called, will teach you that tufted capuchins have distinct personalities, largely dependent on rank; that their favorite food is fluff tacos (marshmallow fluff rolled in fruit rollup); that the alpha male is first in queue for women and food; and that, if they don’t have a token to trade you for food, they’ll give you a pile of shit instead!

On a tiny island swarming with rhesus macaques, comparative cognition is a whole different animal. Unsolicited sex, masturbation, and territorialism are frequent happenings bordering on afterthoughts. Eyewear a mandate, headwear a must – lest you find yourself sprinkled with Herpes-B-flavored urine from above. Here, it’s the monkeys who reign supreme:

…and the humans who have to sit in a cage (for lunch, at least):

Monkeys versus Texans: it’s a tossup.

After running some trials this morning, I spent a few free afternoon hours exploring the perimeter of Big Cay (connected to its smaller companion by an isthmus). Operation: discover some new animals.

A macho crab: