VIDEO. Monkeys 'riding' deer like cowboys… rodeo scenes that intrigue scientists

Une scène étonnante, vue au Japon. CAPTURE D'ECRAN FACEBOOK – CNRS

Cédric Sueur, chercheur au CNRS et éthologue à l’Université de Strasbourg, étudie le comportement étonnant de macaques qui interagissent avec des cerfs sika, au Japon.

So what happens to these macaques who mistake the sika deer, a species established in Asia, for rodeo horses ? Cédric Sueur, a CNRS researcher and ethologist at the University of Strasbourg, has just published a study on the subject, published in the journals Primates and Cultural Science.

The scenario: in Yakushima National Park, in Japan, which inspired the film “Princess Monoke” by Miyazaki, “Macaca fuscata”, an Asian monkey, clings to the “cervus nippon”, and, explains the CNRS, “enjoys riding the deer for rodeos that can last several minutes”.

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The scene is not new. The first observations, recalls the CNRS, date back to the 1940s, and have not stopped until today: “Scientists are trying to understand where and when these rodeos occur and the profile of the individuals who engage in it. From the end of the 1940s to today, traditions and habits specific to each group have been observed in this species, transmitted from generation to generation.”

Cédric Sueur, passionate about the subject, has made a book about it, “Adventures of a primatologist”, published by Odile Jacob in 2024.

The contribution of new technologies

But new perspectives are now opening up, with the help of new technologies: “Fixed cameras and drones allow for remote observation without disturbing the animals. The images will be processed using artificial intelligence to automatically recognize individuals and their behaviors. This will save months of training necessary for scientists to identify all the monkeys in a group,” indicates the CNRS.

In 2017, another scientific team from the The University of Lethbridge in Canada published a study in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior linking it to animal sexual practices.

This is one of the hypotheses currently being discussed by the CNRS, which opens up other avenues: “Transport, warming, physical support , parasite consumption, gambling, and aggressive signals.”