Monkey Park (Jigokudani Yaenkoen)

Knowledge of Japanese monkeys

Japanese monkeys (a scientific name : Macaque Fuscata) are known as the primate species that live in the northern part of the world. They live in the forests, mainly broad-leaved forests in Honshu excluding Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Islands.
Mean weight of adult male is 12~15kg, and that of adult female is 8~13kg. Body length of adult male is 54~61cm, and that of adult female is 47~60cm. They have short tails, which is 8~12cm for males and 7~10cm for females. They have 20 milk teeth and 32 permanent teeth, which is the same as human. Body temperature is 38.6degrees C, higher than human. When they grow up to adult, their faces and bottoms become red color.

Dietary life of Japanese monkey

Their main food item is plants. They eat shoots, young leaves and weeps in spring. In fall, they eat fruits, and nuts and so on. Also they like insects too. Japanese monkeys in heavy snow area eat bamboo leaves, winters shoots or bark of trees and prevent from starving.

Society of Japanese monkey

Several adult males compose their society; the number of adult females is nearly three times of adult males, and their children. Basically, females stay in her natal group, on the other hand, most of male leave their group before they become adults. Some of males become solitary male, but in someday, he will join the new group. They continue to move from group to group. So, the basic composition of group is adult females and their children, forming a matrilineal society.

 
A life of Japanese monkey

Japanese monkeys are diurnal animal. At night, they sleep on the tree, with the posture of holding each other or sitting alone. They never made nests to sleep, and sleeping sites change everyday. From dawn to dust, troop moves slowly and during that, they search food, rest, or play. Mating season is from October to December. Their babies are born from April to June. Conception period is at average 173days and bear only one baby, whose interval is usually a year. They live for 25-30 years.

Face

Sometimes, beautiful actress visits this place to see monkeys. We can identify them easily by her stylish face. Comparing to that, we can not memorize the actors and actresses in the movie and TV of foreign countries, so it is very difficult to judge whether his or her face is good or not good.
Each monkeys has different face. It is very difficult to distinguish monkeys face, like we can not memorize foreigners face. But, if you keep up to observe them, it is become easier and easier to distinguish their face.
They are good at living on trees. They developed the vision system to measure the distance between branches when they leap and jump onto.
In addition, they live in a society, which need to identify each other by eyes. In various situations, they depend on their eyes. So, it is easy for us to identify each monkeys, and also easy for them to memorize our faces who often visit the monkey park. They can detect you even if you change the clothes.
The method to memorize monkeys faces and identify each monkey is called individual identification. It is known that Japanese primates study is the top level of the world because of they uses individual identification method and conducted a detailed observation in many provisioned troops of Japanese monkeys, in that monkeys do not fear the humans. The first step to study about monkeys is to know the faces of monkeys.

For your safety during observation, please abide by these rules:
Do not touch the monkeys or scare the monkeys!
Do not feed the monkeys!
Dogs/Cats etc., are not allowed in the premises!

Photography by camera or video is possible
The monkeys do not mind the flash of cameras.