Eric Shaw and Professor Agustin Fuentes. Picture Johnny Bugeja

An American anthropologist who specialises in studying interaction between humans and monkeys believes Gibraltar should rethink the way it markets the Barbary Macaques as part of its tourist product.

Although feeding the monkeys is illegal, many operators in the tourism industry encourage close contact with humans as a key element of their sales pitch.

The result is that the monkeys learn to associate humans with food and that in turn leads to problems, as evidenced by recent correspondence to this newspaper.

“In all the studies I’ve done all around the world, there is one main culprit for increasing the problem between people and monkeys, and that’s food,” said Professor Agustín Fuentes, director of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

“The more we train them that people equal food, the more they are going to seek that out.”

Prof Fuentes works very closely with the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society and is currently on the Rock. He is well placed to comment on Gibraltar’s monkeys because he and his students have been conducting research here since 2004.

Part of that research has included talking to tourists about their experiences in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve and about their expectations.

“What the majority of tourists want is the nature experience,” Prof Fuentes said. “They want to connect with the monkeys, but very few of them actually want to touch them.”

Tourists, he added, wanted information and background on the monkeys. A visit to the Upper Rock should be like stepping into a nature programme, not a circus act.

“A lot of people don’t realise what an amazing resource the monkeys are,” Prof Fuentes said.

“What you have here is an endangered species.”

“Not only is it one of the rarest monkeys in the world, but it’s also one of the most interesting.”

“How many people know, for example, that in this species, unlike almost every other one, the males care for the infants?”

The American academic said he was not offering a negative critique but rather trying to encourage a forward-looking discussion.

He said it was important to move away from destructive finger-pointing to explore ways of tackling the concerns of Gibraltar residents while safeguarding the welfare of the monkeys and the economic interests of the tourism sector.

Prof Fuentes has researched similar situations in many other countries and has helped prepare monkey management plans in Indonesia and Singapore.

Stopping feeding is a critical issue and he said a broad public campaign was needed to make this information known.

He said that in other countries where he had worked, a key element of the success of a management plan was a willingness to enforce feeding bans by fining people where necessary.

Prof Fuentes also debunked a much-repeated, yet inaccurate myth often heard in Gibraltar.

The Barbary Macaques, he said, are not roaming because they are hungry. In fact, the reverse is true and there is scientific evidence to prove it.

As an experiment, Prof Fuentes and local researchers stopped giving food to one of the packs and found that the monkeys reduced the area over which they roamed, from seven hectares to three hectares.

Without a readily-available handout of food, the monkeys spent more time feeding on the natural forest. They went from receiving 80% of their provisions and foraging for the rest, to foraging for 80% of the daily intake.

“The more we give them everything on a plate, the more time they have to roam,” Prof Fuentes said.

“The monkeys are not food-stressed and we’ve evidence and data to support that.”

“There are other reasons [why they seek out humans], and that’s what the debate has got to be about.”

Prof Fuentes and his team have also conducted several years of research analysing the chemical composition of the monkeys to determine the impact of diet on health.

The research showed that Gibraltar’s monkeys are in good health but that those that interact with humans have different chemical composition to those that do not.

Those that have regular contact with tourists are more susceptible to obesity and dental decay, the research found.