Monkeys on the island of Bali grift hard to get their supper. Researchers have found that light-fingered macaques at one of the most popular temples on the island have learned to steal tourists' possessions, and then barter with them for food before giving them back.
The criminal underworld of long-tailed macaques is seemingly very fruitful – with some of the best purloiners holding their ill-gotten goods to ransom until they are offered only the choice bits of fruit – yet only some populations display this robbing and bartering behavior, leading the researchers to ask whether or not it is a cultural activity. [...]
Despite other places on Bali having groups of macaques coming into frequent contact with tourists, offering ripe opportunity for extortion, it is only those in the Uluwatu Temple that seem to have figured it out. This suggests that the robbing and bartering behavior is learned, rather than innate. But what the researchers were really interested in was finding out whether or not it was cultural, publishing their results in the journal Primates.
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