© Valeria Simeonova
The UVP conducts research on a semi-urban population of vervet monkeys at Simbithi Eco-Estate: a unique, eco-friendly residential community that co-exists harmoniously with wildlife and nature near Ballito at the East coast of South Africa.
Today, urbanisation is not only the most common but also the most extreme form of environmental change for wildlife. The Urban Vervet Project investigates how urbanization impacts primate behaviour. Our research has both scientific and societal goals. At the UVP, we are studying which behavioural traits are involved in successful adaptations in vervet monkeys, as well as what are the behavioural and social consequences for urban primates. This will help us understand and predict the ongoing impacts of urbanisation on monkey populations. With increasing urbanisation, interactions between humans and vervets have intensified, creating challenges for both parties. Through our research, we aim to provide knowledge on how to mitigate potential human-wildlife conflicts and inform management strategies.
Today, urbanisation is not only the most common but also the most extreme form of environmental change for wildlife. The Urban Vervet Project investigates how urbanization impacts primate behaviour. Our research has both scientific and societal goals. At the UVP, we are studying which behavioural traits are involved in successful adaptations in vervet monkeys, as well as what are the behavioural and social consequences for urban primates. This will help us understand and predict the ongoing impacts of urbanisation on monkey populations. With increasing urbanisation, interactions between humans and vervets have intensified, creating challenges for both parties. Through our research, we aim to provide knowledge on how to mitigate potential human-wildlife conflicts and inform management strategies.
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© Stephanie Mercier
Ongoing projects
Primate Cognition & urbanisation
Urban environments expose animals to various anthropogenic materials and foods that facilitate foraging innovations in species with opportunistic diets and high behavioural flexibility, like the vervet monkeys. The UVP is researching motivational factors and cognitive abilities linked to problem-solving, as those are predicted to be beneficial for animals adapting to urban environments. Phylogenetic comparisons suggest that behavioural flexibility facilitates success in urban environments. However, it is less clear whether urbanization fosters cognitive skills that require flexibility or whether successful individuals in urban environments simply apply pre-evolved skills to solve new problems (exaptation hypothesis: Johnson-Ulrich & Forss, 2025). We are investigating whether variation in anthropogenic experience drives behavioural flexibility, required to solve new technical problems, and how the cognitive development of urban primates is influenced by their socio-ecological interactions. Anthropogenic impacts bring both new threats, such as traffic and conflict with humans, as well as potential benefits, including access to human food. In our research, we combine both bottom-up approaches (behavioural observations of risk-taking situations) with experimental measures of risk propensity and exploration tendencies to provide insights into the role personality traits play for success in the semi-urban landscape.
By collaborating with the Inkawu Vervet Project, located within the Mawana Game Reserve and the CROW rehabilitation centre, our research also takes comparative approaches across habitats of vervet monkeys. Using this comparative approach, we performed an intraspecific cross-habitat (wild, urban and captive) analysis assessing exploration of novel objects (referred to as “object curiosity”). To measure “object curiosity,” we exposed monkeys to various types of novel stimuli and compared their approaches and explorative behaviour. Our results revealed differences in the number of approaches and explorative behaviour toward novel stimuli between the three habitat types. Captive vervet monkeys were significantly more explorative than both semi- urban and wild troops, suggesting that positive experiences with humans and lack of predation, rather than exposure to human materials per se, influence object curiosity (Ellington et al. 2024). Within the wild sample, habituated monkeys showed stronger exploration tendencies that counterparts not used to human presence further implying an effect of habituation levels (Forss et al. 2022). Across habitats, juvenile males were the most explorative age-sex class. This is likely due to males being the dispersing sex and juveniles being more motivated to learn about their environment. Additionally, we found that items associated with human food, elicited stronger explorative responses in urban monkeys than non-food related objects, suggesting that their motivation to explore might be driven by “anthrophilia”, that is, their experience of rewarding foraging on similar anthropogenic food sources (Ellington et al. 2024).
By collaborating with the Inkawu Vervet Project, located within the Mawana Game Reserve and the CROW rehabilitation centre, our research also takes comparative approaches across habitats of vervet monkeys. Using this comparative approach, we performed an intraspecific cross-habitat (wild, urban and captive) analysis assessing exploration of novel objects (referred to as “object curiosity”). To measure “object curiosity,” we exposed monkeys to various types of novel stimuli and compared their approaches and explorative behaviour. Our results revealed differences in the number of approaches and explorative behaviour toward novel stimuli between the three habitat types. Captive vervet monkeys were significantly more explorative than both semi- urban and wild troops, suggesting that positive experiences with humans and lack of predation, rather than exposure to human materials per se, influence object curiosity (Ellington et al. 2024). Within the wild sample, habituated monkeys showed stronger exploration tendencies that counterparts not used to human presence further implying an effect of habituation levels (Forss et al. 2022). Across habitats, juvenile males were the most explorative age-sex class. This is likely due to males being the dispersing sex and juveniles being more motivated to learn about their environment. Additionally, we found that items associated with human food, elicited stronger explorative responses in urban monkeys than non-food related objects, suggesting that their motivation to explore might be driven by “anthrophilia”, that is, their experience of rewarding foraging on similar anthropogenic food sources (Ellington et al. 2024).
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Fig. 1 In vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), habituation to humans raised their expectation of potential to retrieve food rewards and thereby influence their interest in approaching novel artefacts (multiple stimuli including both human-made and natural items) [from Forss et al. 2022]
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Fig. 2 In a sub-sample of the same dataset, urban conspecifics did however not show higher interest in novel artefacts such as rubber butterflies or novel natural items like seashells, likely due to an “over-habituation” towards the diversity of artefacts and human-made objects that are a standard part of their environment. Instead, urban monkeys showed selectivity and increased exploration of food associated anthropogenic items. [from Ellington et al. 2024]
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Urban challenges: MOnkey - Dog Interactions
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With humans, come their pets, and in the case of domestic dogs, humans have introduced new predators to urban wildlife. As such, anthropogenic behaviour and culture have facilitated contacts between prey and predator species that were originally not sympatric, hence have not co-evolved, reshuffling the evolutionary predator-prey arms race. The research conducted at UVP aims at understanding how urban primates perceive this new threat and how vervet monkeys cope with new risks. Compared to hard wired evolutionary responses to predators in natural habitats, dealing with “novel” domestic predators in anthropogenic habitats is challenging because, animals must integrate new cues of risk related to the predator itself and the altered urban setting. Domestic dogs illustrate this well: although they threaten small- and medium-sized animals, not all dogs pose an equal danger, especially not for primates the size of vervet monkeys. Despite being the same species, dogs show greater variation in appearance and behaviour than wild predators, spanning from harmless lapdogs to high-risk hunting breeds. Additionally, factors like being overweight or elderly—conditions seldom found in wild predators—can reduce a dog's motor and sensory skills, making it a less effective hunter. In our research we seek to understand the cognitive abilities and communication involved in vervet monkeys processing of risk information, and how these may be altered in the urbanised environment.
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© Sofia Forss
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Urban Impacts on space use and movement
For most animals, where to go is generally decided based on immediate or memorised information on food availability or predation risk. In other words, animals navigate a landscape of energy and a landscape of predation fear. In urban habitats additional risks emerge such as traffic and anthropogenic environments brings about constantly changing elements, such as the expansion of human infrastructure, creating new living conditions for wildlife. Urban environments also provide many new food opportunities (vervet monkeys opportunistically feed on anthropogenic food) that are available all year round, releasing the monkeys from an important ecological challenge. As a result, we observe our urban monkeys spending significantly more time resting and playing than their conspecifics living in non-anthropogenic habitats. This means that well-being or “joyful” experiences may represent an additional landscape that monkeys integrate when making their movement decisions. To investigate how urbanization impacts monkeys space use and navigation challenges, we combine movement ecology with animal cognition study to revealing strategies of spatial use in semi-urban vervet monkeys and to understand how the balance between positive and negative memories impacts habitat use in our study population at the Simbithi Eco-Estate.
Citizen Science
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One of UVP’s goals is to collect specific data around human-vervet interactions to investigate the impact of urbanisation on the vervet monkeys' behaviour and adaptation. Because the monkeys are sharing their habitat with the residents at Simbithi Eco-Estate, this co-existence also provides us an excellent study opportunity to integrate a citizen science approach to the field of primatology. Since the start of UVP in November 2022, the residents at our study site are actively involved in our data collection and we are truly thankful to have so many interested and collaborative people participating. This cooperation takes form in a variety of ways. First, through a WhatsApp group where we receive multiple data points daily from inhabitants and their monkeys' sightings. This offers us detailed information on the monkeys ranging routines and behaviours through the entire estate, giving us an idea about the number of troops present and the evolution of the whole population’s demography. Thanks to the active involvement of Simbithi's residents, we can build up a large database including data points and frequencies, that researchers alone cannot achieve. Second, by allowing us to walk near their properties: observing what happens there enable us to collect detailed ad libitum natural observations. Finally, through questionnaires we collected detailed data on the interactions between residents and the wildlife living around their property. This helps us to investigate what attracts monkeys to specific houses and what repel them from others, hopefully leading to useful advice to improve human-wildlife co-occurrence here and in South Africa.
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Urban play
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Play is a fundamental driver of fitness, yet its specific function in wild populations remains largely understudied. While the adaptive benefits of play are well-documented in humans, we are only beginning to understand how it assists non-human animals in overcoming environmental stressors and its role in information transmission. Urban vervet monkeys provide a unique window into this mystery: due to their food abundant habitat, they can allocate a large time of their activity budget to play, especially social play. This high investment raises the intriguing question to what extent play is a leisure activity but beyond that also can act as a critical tool for coping with habitat change. At UVP we study how play behaviour facilitates the successful transition of wildlife into anthropogenic environments.
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© Valeria Simeonova
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Foraging in an anthropogenic ecosystem
© Adrian McConnell
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Opportunistic foraging on anthropogenic food sources represents a key behavioural adaptation to urbanized environments. While such “raiding” offers high-energy, year-round nutritional stability, it involves a complex cost-benefit trade-off: individuals must balance caloric gains against the risks of human conflict, disease exposure, and the long-term health impacts of high-sugar diets. At the Urban Vervet Project, we study how demographic and social factors influence these behaviours and how social tolerance and group dynamics dictate the success and frequency of anthropogenic foraging. To do so we identify which food sources are targeted, the techniques employed by the monkeys, and how preventative measures (e.g., monkey-proofing) influence both the success rate and the social composition of the raiding party. By bridging the gap between behavioural ecology and urban adaptation, this project elucidates how anthropogenic environments reshape primate foraging strategies and sociality.
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Between species interactions
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Beyond humans, our Simbithi vervet monkeys share their habitat with multiple other wild species. Due to the urban matrix, alternating areas of high human impacts (such as houses, gardens and roads) with natural forest patches, these co-habiting species often occur in proximity in these vegetative areas. At UVP we commonly observe interactions between our study monkeys and other wildlife, such as monkeys grooming antelopes or “playing” with banded mongoose. We collect targeted data to describe and study the socio-ecological causes and consequences of these between species interactions, facilitated by the anthropogenic environment.
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© Emma Chen
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Sinergia
The Sinergia project titled “The Food-Medicine Continuum in Vervet Monkeys: Investigations on the Interplay between Diet Quality, Stress Coping, and the Endocannabinoid System” is an interdisciplinary research project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation. While nutrition is a cornerstone of life-history theory, the specific mechanisms linking diet choice to physiological outcomes across species remain elusive. The project investigates how dietary quality and plant secondary metabolites influence the gut-brain axis, specifically through the endocannabinoid system (ECS). Using vervet monkeys as an opportunistic model across wild, urban, and captive settings, the project utilises a zoopharmacognostic framework to investigate how changing dietary patterns influence the gut-brain axis in vervet monkeys. The projects central hypothesis, supported by preliminary data, is that plant-derived secondary metabolites enhance fitness by modulating the endocannabinoid system (ECS), a conserved lipid network regulating inflammation, food intake, and behaviour. For more information, see: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/10000189
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© Stephanie Mercier
