The emperor tamarin monkeys that disappeared from the Dallas Zoo earlier this week but were recovered by police in an abandoned home on Tuesday are healthy and uninjured, the zoo said.
“Emperor tamarin monkeys, Bella and Finn, were so happy to snuggle into their nest sack here at the Zoo last night!” the zoo said on Facebook. “Our veterinary and animal care teams have said, beyond losing a bit of weight, they show no signs of injury and both started eating and drinking almost immediately once the team completed health exams on Tuesday night.”
The zoo said the monkeys will go through a quarantine period before being returned to their zoo habitat.
The zoo also noted that video from their surveillance cameras released on Tuesday “seems to have been critical in generating a tip that led to the recovery of the tamarins.” Further, there is a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the person responsible, the zoo said.
The health update comes two days after the zoo said that two tamarin monkeys were missing and that their habitat had been “intentionally compromised.” The Dallas Police said they had reason to believe the monkeys were taken, the zoo said.
The disappearance followed a series of suspicious incidents at the zoo in the last month involving a leopard, langur monkeys and a vulture, all of which have led to a hike in security.
After a tip, the missing tamarin monkeys were found Tuesday inside a closet in an abandoned home in Lancaster, about 15 miles away from the zoo. The police released a photo of one monkey in the closet, standing atop what looked like fencing.
“We are thrilled beyond belief to share that our two emperor tamarin monkeys have been found,” the Dallas Zoo said Tuesday evening. “They will be evaluated by our veterinarians this evening.”
Elsewhere, a Louisiana zoo reported the weekend theft of 12 squirrel monkeys.
The Dallas Zoo learned Monday the duo of emperor tamarin monkeys was missing from their enclosure, it said.
Dallas police concluded the monkeys’ habitat was intentionally cut open, and it was “believed the animals were intentionally taken from the enclosure,” they said.
The zoo was closed Monday due to inclement weather, it earlier had announced, with the closure extended through Wednesday due to an ice storm.
How the animals left the zoo and got the abandoned house in Lancaster is still a mystery.
Police on Tuesday released surveillance video and a photo of an unidentified man they said they were searching for and want to interview. Police have not said why they want to speak to him or when the footage was recorded, and they’ve asked the public to contact them at 214-671-4509 with any information.
The surveillance video shows a man walking slowly down a nearly empty zoo sidewalk, looking back and forth as he moves. Another person is seen in the background walking in the opposite direction.
The photo shows a man wearing a navy hooded sweatshirt and a navy and red beanie cap while eating a bag of Doritos.
Zoo officials said Wednesday that security is being tightened.
“Although our security program had worked in the past, it has become obvious that we need to make significant changes,” officials said in a written statement. “Words cannot express the frustration our team is feeling.”
Security upgrades include more cameras and more than doubling the number of security patrols as well as increasing the number of people working overnight, installing more fencing and adding other unspecified security technology, according to the news release.
A few other strange developments with animals have unfolded in recent weeks at the Dallas Zoo.
A clouded leopard named Nova disappeared January 13, and the zoo closed to search for the animal.
Police launched a criminal investigation after they found the fence around Nova’s enclosure had been “intentionally cut,” they said. Later that day, Nova was found near her habitat.
Meanwhile, zoo staff observed a similar cut to the enclosure of some langur monkeys, but none of them had escaped, the zoo said.
Police did not immediately determine whether the two incidents were related.
The incidents prompted the zoo to ramp up security, including installing more cameras and boosting overnight security personnel and staffing, its president and CEO Gregg Hudson said. Restrictions were also placed on animals’ ability to go outside overnight, he added.
Then, a lappet-faced vulture named Pin was found dead January 21 in his habitat. “Circumstances of the death are unusual, and the death does not appear to be from natural causes,” the zoo said in a statement.
The bird’s death was “suspicious” and it suffered “an unusual wound and injuries,” Hudson said.
The zoo is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of a suspect in the vulture’s death.
While the incidents at the Dallas Zoo and the monkey thefts at Zoosiana in Broussard, Louisiana, have raised general security concerns, at least one zoo in Florida is not stepping up security.
There are “several security measures already in place in Zoo Miami” and only so much that can be done, said Ron Magill, wildlife expert and Zoo Miami spokesperson.
“If someone wants to get in and is determined,” he told CNN, “they’re going to find a way.”
The Dallas Zoo says the two monkeys that are believed to have been taken from their habitats Monday have been found.
Dallas police said that they found the two emperor tamarin monkeys after getting a tip. Police said they then went to the empty home in Lancaster, located just south of Dallas, and found the monkeys safe in a closet.
“We are thrilled beyond belief to share that our two emperor tamarin monkeys have been found,” zoo officials said in a statement. “DPD located the animals early this evening, and called our team to come secure and transport the tamarins back to the Zoo. They will be evaluated by our veterinarians this evening.”
Zoo officials added that more information would be given Wednesday while details about the recovery will be provided by Dallas Police.
No arrests have been made.
The empty building where the monkeys were found was recently broken into and filled with wild animals, according to a nearby church that owned the property and planned to use it as a youth center.
Dallas Police
Officers from Dallas and Lancaster found the Dallas Zoo’s missing emperor tamarin monkeys in an abandoned home Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Dallas Police on Tuesday asked for help identifying a man they say they want to speak with about the case. Detectives said they want to speak with the man “in regard to the two tamarin monkeys missing from the Dallas Zoo,” but offered few other details.
“We reached out to authorities saying that we thought we knew who the person was and how we have had recent break-ins at our youth center that we’ve been trying to get going for the community,” said Tanya, the daughter of the church’s pastor who wished to be identified by her first name.
“Someone has gotten back in there and destroyed it even further,” she said. “So that’s setting us back even further as far as getting the facility up and going. But it was really a shock to see that those precious, you know, animals were in there.”
A spokesman for the Family Center church says the organization is working with police to identify the person responsible.
“The intruder not only caused significant damage to the youth center’s facilities, but also put the safety of both the animals and the community at risk. Despite the setback, the church remains committed to its mission of providing support and resources to those in need and is working closely with local authorities to ensure that the culprit is brought to justice,” the spokesman said.
It’s the fourth suspicious incident at the zoo since the start of the new year — the first involving a clouded leopard, Nova, who escaped her enclosure after police discovered it had been intentionally cut. As Dallas Police opened a criminal investigation, zoo staff members the next day found a similar intentional cut on the enclosure that houses langur monkeys, all of whom were accounted for. Most recently, an endangered vulture was found dead with an “unusual wound,” zoo officials said. Dallas Police later said they were investigating the death as being suspicious.
Two emperor tamarin monkeys missing from the Dallas Zoo were found Tuesday, the zoo said.
“We are thrilled beyond belief to share that our two emperor tamarin monkeys have been found,” the zoo said in a statement.
Dallas police located the animals early Tuesday evening, the zoo said, without immediately releasing details about how they were found. The zoo earlier said the animals were believed to have been stolen Monday.
Police “called our team to come secure and transport the tamarins back to the Zoo,” the zoo said. The monkeys will be evaluated by veterinarians Tuesday evening, according to the zoo.
Dallas police earlier said its preliminary investigation found the emperor tamarin monkeys’ habitat had been intentionally cut open and “it is believed the animals were intentionally taken from the enclosure.”
Police had also released surveillance video and a photo of an unidentified man they wanted to speak to in regard to the two missing tamarin monkeys. “Dallas police are looking for the public’s help in identifying the pictured individual,” they wrote.
In the surveillance video, the man can be seen walking slowly down a nearly empty zoo sidewalk, looking back and forth as he moves. A second person also can be seen in the background, but that person walks in the opposite direction.
In the still image, the man is wearing a navy blue hooded sweatshirt and a navy and red beanie cap and is eating a bag of Doritos.
The investigation comes after a series of suspicious animal incidents this month at the Dallas Zoo. The zoo said it believed two of its emperor tamarin monkeys were stolen after they were discovered missing from their enclosure Monday.
“Emperor tamarin monkeys would likely stay close to home – the Zoo searched near their habitat and across Zoo grounds and did not locate them,” the zoo said in a statement Monday.
Earlier Monday, the zoo said it would be closed for the day due to inclement weather. The closure was later extended through Wednesday due to an ice storm impacting the area, the zoo said.
This is the fourth time this month that the zoo has discovered its animals or their enclosures may have been tampered with, including the “unusual” circumstances surrounding the death of a vulture last week, according to the zoo.
The string of events began January 13 when a clouded leopard named Nova disappeared, prompting the zoo to close as they searched for the animal. Dallas police opened a criminal investigation after it was discovered that the fence around Nova’s enclosure had been “intentionally cut,” police said.
While the feline was found close to her habitat later that day, zoo personnel also found a similar cut had been made to the enclosure of some langur monkeys. Despite the new escape route, none of the monkeys left their habitat, the zoo said. Police said at the time that it was “unknown if the two incidents are related.”
Following the incidents, the zoo installed additional security cameras, more than doubled its overnight security personnel, increased its overnight staffing, and began limiting some animals’ ability to go outside overnight, President and CEO Gregg Hudson said.
But less than two weeks after the first discoveries, a vulture named Pin was found dead in his habitat. Hudson called the bird’s death “suspicious” and said “an unusual wound and injuries” indicated Pin did not die from natural causes.
The zoo is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of a suspect in the vulture’s death.
Dallas police are investigating all four incidents. A spokesperson said last week that the department is collaborating with US Fish and Wildlife on the investigations.
Police believe two monkeys were taken from their enclosure at the Dallas Zoo Monday morning.
Zoo spokeswoman Kari Streiber said when staff discovered two emperor tamarin monkeys were missing, it was immediately “clear the habitat had been intentionally compromised.” According to police, the habitat had been cut.
Streiber said since the monkeys, which are expected to “stay close to home,” were still unaccounted for as of 3:50 p.m., police “have reason to believe the tamarins were taken.”
The zoo was closed Monday due to inclement weather, and isn’t expected to reopen until Thursday.
No additional information was immediatley available.
Dead vulture, stolen monkeys: What’s going on at the Dallas Zoo?
The investigation comes after an unprecedented string of events at the Dallas Zoo, including another missing animal, additional torn enclosures and an unusual death.
On Jan. 13, a 4-year-old clouded leopard named Nova had a day of social media fame when the zoo announced she had escaped from her enclosure. After search involving infrared drones, a “code blue” and Dallas police’s SWAT team, she was found on-site and unharmed.
The day after Nova escaped, officials revealed a similar cut was found on the langur monkeys’ enclosure, but said all of the langurs were in their habitat and accounted for.
About a week after the habitat vandalisms, a 35-year-old endangered vulture was found dead, and zoo staff quickly deemed the cause “unusual.” The bird, named Pin, was one of four lappet-faced vultures at the zoo. He had been at the Dallas Zoo for 33 years.
At first, officials only said that Pin’s death did not appear to be from natural causes, but after the zoo’s veterinary team conducted a necropsy — or an animal autopsy — they said the bird was found with a “wound.”
The Dallas Zoo is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who provides information, on any of the cases, that leads to an arrest and indictment.
If you have a tip, call the Dallas Police Department’s animal cruelty unit at 214-670-7694.
Summary: Study builds on mounting evidence that suggests rhesus monkeys may be a good model to study social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorder.
Source: Florida Institute of Technology
New research builds upon growing evidence demonstrating the importance of rhesus macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) as a model for the core social impairments observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
ASD is an early onset neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent social communication and interaction impairments. Despite its prevalence and societal cost, its basic disease mechanisms remain poorly understood in part due to the overreliance on rodent models, which lack the complex social and cognitive skills critical to modeling behavioral symptoms relevant to human ASD.
Like humans, rhesus monkeys have complex cognitive abilities and display stable and pronounced individual differences in social functioning, making them a promising model to better understand the biological and behavioral mechanisms underlying social impairments.
“Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior,” a study by assistant professor Catherine F. Talbot, Ph.D., in the School of Psychology at Florida Tech and researchers from Stanford University and University of California, Davis’s California National Primate Research Center, found that several aspects of social functioning differed between monkeys that were classified as low-social compared to monkeys classified as high-social.
Analyzing three years of data from 95 male rhesus monkeys housed at the California National Primate Research Center in large, outdoor social groups in semi-naturalistic habitats, the team first classified monkeys based on their natural social behavior.
For instance, they looked at whether the monkeys were participating in activities such as grooming, which is a behavior that facilitates social bonding in non-human primates, or if they were in proximity to or in contact with other individuals, or if they were just hanging out by themselves with no one else around.
Monkeys that spent the most time alone were classified as low-social, whereas monkeys that spent the least time alone were classified as high-social. Next, the researchers evaluated differences between the social communication profiles of these two groups of monkeys.
The team found that high-social monkeys initiate more pro-social behavior, which encompasses behaviors like sitting in contact with others and grooming, compared to low-social monkeys. However, there was no difference between how often low-social monkeys and high-social monkeys received pro-social behavior.
“This suggests that there’s this underlying social motivation factor, that we’re seeing a higher social motivation as high-social monkeys, which doesn’t sound like rocket science, but it does support the social motivation hypothesis of ASD and lend insight into how this might be impacted by underlying biology,” Talbot said.
“There are multiple theories or ideas about what drives social impairments observed in autism and one of them is that individuals with ASD have lower social motivation.”
This hypothesis suggests that people with ASD tend to have deficits in social reward processing, which causes diminished social initiation and difficulty in fostering and maintaining social bonds. In other words, social interactions are not inherently rewarding.
The team also found that there was no difference in threat behavior between low-social and high-social monkeys, either in the initiation or receipt of threats. That was contrary to their hypothesis, where they figured that if low-social monkeys are not communicating effectively with their peers they would be more likely to get bullied and receive traumatic injuries, something they have found in previous research.
Like humans, rhesus monkeys have complex cognitive abilities and display stable and pronounced individual differences in social functioning, making them a promising model to better understand the biological and behavioral mechanisms underlying social impairments. Credit: Kathy West
The findings of the current study better characterize this naturally occurring, low-social phenotype and can help researchers gain mechanistic insight into social motivation deficits observed in people with ASD.
“There really hasn’t been much work looking at rhesus macaques as an ASD model,” Talbot said.
“What we’re modeling are naturally occurring social deficits. So, in humans, autism spectrum disorder is just that—a spectrum—and you see these traits that are distributed throughout the entire human population, not just the clinical population. People who may not be classified as being on the spectrum will also exhibit some these traits.”
Individuals with ASD may also experience deficits in other socio-cognitive skills like theory of mind, which is understanding that one’s own personal beliefs and knowledge are different from others.
Following eye gaze and understanding what another person is looking at is another component one component of theory of mind. An impaired ability to follow eye gaze is often one of the first behavioral signs to emerge in children with ASD.
The team is also working on research looking at the underlying biology of low-social and high-social monkeys and how this might relate to their performance on other social cognitive tasks, including how well the monkeys follow the eye gaze of their peers, how well they interact with their peers, how well they identify faces and how that compares to their performance in the non-social domain, like how well they identify objects.
About this autism research news
Author: Press Office Source: Florida Institute of Technology Contact: Press Office – Florida Institute of Technology Image: The image is credited to Kathy West
Original Research: Closed access. “Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior” by Catherine F. Talbot et al. American Journal of Primatology
Abstract
See also
Rhesus monkey sociality is stable across time and linked to variation in the initiation but not receipt of prosocial behavior
Rhesus monkeys and humans are highly social primates, yet both species exhibit pronounced variation in social functioning, spanning a spectrum of sociality.
Naturally occurring low sociality in rhesus monkeys may be a promising construct by which to model social impairments relevant to human autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly if low sociality is found to be stable across time and associated with diminished social motivation.
Thus, to better characterize variation in sociality and social communication profiles, we performed quantitative social behavior assessments on N = 95 male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) housed in large, outdoor groups.
In Study 1, we determined the social classification of our subjects by rank-ordering their total frequency of nonsocial behavior. Monkeys with the greatest frequency of nonsocial behavior were classified as low-social (n = 20) and monkeys with the lowest frequency of nonsocial behavior were classified as high-social (n = 21).
To assess group differences in social communication profiles, in Study 2, we quantified the rates of transient social communication signals, and whether these social signals were initiated by or directed towards the focal subject.
Finally, in Study 3, we assessed the within-individual stability of sociality in a subset of monkeys (n = 11 low-social, n = 11 high-social) two years following our initial observations.
Nonsocial behavior frequency significantly correlated across the two timepoints (Studies 1 and 3). Likewise, low-social versus high-social classification accurately predicted classification two years later.
Low-social monkeys initiated less prosocial behavior than high-social monkeys, but groups did not differ in receipt of prosocial behavior, nor did they differ in threat behavior.
These findings indicate that sociality is a stable, trait-like characteristic and that low sociality is linked to diminished initiation of prosocial behavior in rhesus macaques.
This evidence also suggests that low sociality may be a useful construct for gaining mechanistic insight into the social motivational deficits often observed in people with ASD.
From the outside of Suffolk’s Butley Priory, it sounds as though the ancient building is collapsing in on itself. Located within a secluded and rural pocket of southern England, it is the sanctuary of this converted 14th Century monastery that Arctic Monkeys have chosen to call home for a fortnight. Behind the stained glass windows, guitarist Jamie Cook is conjuring up a rousing squall, jiggling on the spot. His bandmates look on, eyes ablaze with excitement at the wall of noise unfolding before them.
It’s the middle of July 2021, and this is the Sheffield band’s final week at Butley Priory, where they’ve been working on ‘The Car’, their masterful seventh album. Prior to recording, the building had been part of the four-piece’s legend for some time: it’s where longtime producer James Ford – recognised amongst fans as ‘the fifth Arctic Monkey’ – celebrated his 40th birthday. Before they reunited here for the first time since lockdown, however, the band’s initial intention for the record was “to write louder songs than we had for some time,” says frontman Alex Turner, but quickly realised that this collection was evolving beyond a bedrock of heavy riffs. “I think what I found myself wanting to play when the band were around was actually very surprising to me,” he adds.
Every performance was recorded, with the results influencing what the band preserved, honed, and ultimately ditched. And for two weeks, the world outside of Arctic Monkeys’ temporary studio was well and truly banished. When the band – comprising Turner, Cook, bassist Nick O’Malley and Matt Helders on drums – were not walking around the wilds of the Suffolk countryside together, they shared pints and watched on as England’s journey at the pandemic-delayed Euro 2020 tournament played out. For a fortnight, time almost seemed meaningless. The gang were finally back together.
As Turner relays this story to NME, he’s about as far from that memory as you can get. We meet the frontman in an east London pub on a deceptively warm October afternoon a little over a year later, just as ‘The Car’’s release week is starting to kick off. Almost unbelievably, the band’s 2009 hit ‘Crying Lightning’ is playing quietly from the stereo downstairs, as if on cue. Considering that Turner is about to settle down for a drink – or, er, an English Breakfast tea – on the floor above, whoever is in charge of the playlist this lunchtime is blissfully unaware that they’ve managed to tempt fate. Turner looks too busy attending to his little china teapot to notice, anyway.
Credit: Zackery Michael
The group’s highly-anticipated reunion comes along with ‘The Car’, a 10-track collection that, in a five-star review, NME described as “a summary of the band’s story so far: sharp songwriting, relentless innovation and unbreakable teamwork.” Under the supervision of ensemble director Bridget Samuels [Midsommar, The Green Knight] at London’s RAK Studios, it’s the first album on which the band have worked with a full orchestra, allowing Turner’s voice – which sounds more brooding and malleable than it’s ever been – to pierce through a cinematic landscape of strings, piano motifs and low-slung bass rumbles.
Elegiac opener ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ immediately raises the stakes. A breakup tune that quietly anguishes over vanishing sensations of violin and harpsichord, the album’s lead single was the first to be demoed at Butley Priory. “And picture this: while recording, I’m running around with a 16mm camera that kind of kept me out of the way of everybody a little bit,” says Turner. He ultimately saved some of the footage for himself, and the rest was interspersed throughout the track’s understatedly retro video, making for a touching time capsule of that particular recording session.
Crucially, the new album – with the cover artwork shot by Helders – presents both a more cohesive and collaborative band than the one we heard on 2018’s divisive ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’. That record riffed on consumerism and technology with a burnished depth, but traded it’s wildly successful predecessor’s tsunami of bravado, riffs and hairgel – 2013’s multiple BRIT-winning ‘AM’ – for searching lounge-pop. Its writing credits reveal that most of the band were perhaps under-utilised as performers, given that O’Malley only appears on seven tracks, and Helders’ drumming is largely restrained.
‘The Car’’s daring centrepiece, ‘Body Paint’ flips the script entirely: you can practically hear Turner wink as he sings, “and if you’re thinking of me / I’m probably thinking of you”, before swirling atmospherics and O’Malley’s tumbling bass make way for a gale-force guitar solo from Cook. It’s the full-bodied sound of the Butley Priory trip, which was solely about having fun and bringing that feeling into the new record.
“We weren’t mentally ready to play stadiums up until now” – Alex Turner
By throwing themselves into new, more daring sounds, Arctic Monkeys have emerged fearless, Turner says decisively. “The records we’re making now are definitely different now to the ones we probably thought we would be making when we started out – actually, we didn’t think we’d be even making records anymore,” Turner says. “20 years ago, I didn’t envision ourselves going beyond…” He looks deep into his cup of tea as if searching for the rest of his answer, while taking an enormous pause from which you fear he may never return. “Well, the fact we gave ourselves the name ‘Arctic Monkeys’ alludes to the extent of ambitions we had.” He stops again. “Clearly hardly any.”
Yet Arctic Monkeys’ friendship has endured, in part, because the band have always known when to say no. They built a fanbase on the basis of a few early demos shared by fans through MySpace, and before the four-piece signed with the independent Domino Records – also home to Wet Leg and Hot Chip – they’d already made a pact to never agree to their music being used in advertising. They even turned down a then-coveted offer to appear on Top Of The Pops. Weeks later, their monstrous debut single ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ stormed to the top of the UK Singles Chart instantly – no mean feat for a band without major record label cash or mountains of press on their side. They’d set a precedent to follow their own rules, and it had worked.
Stardom would soon prove to be inescapable, however: the band looked perpetually shellshocked when they broke out as unassuming teenagers with their enduring and now-seminal debut album, 2006’s ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’. “Somebody call 999, Richard Hawley’s been robbed!,” Turner famously joked, as the band, looking somewhere between a haze of drunkenness and feeling flustered, collected the Mercury Prize later that year. The following decade would see them evolve into the UK’s biggest, most culturally important band: they have gone on to headline Glastonbury twice, perform at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and, perhaps most importantly, have remained consistent, while their peers in sound have failed to keep similar longevity.
“When I think back to earlier times, I feel like we were just running on instinct, creative decisions included,” says Turner, with a gentle laugh. “I mean, like, first and foremost, we didn’t really know how to play our instruments at the start. But beyond that, I don’t really think that much within the band has changed a great deal; we might know a few more tricks, but we’re still rolling on that very same instinct.”
Dressed in a royal blue Lacoste jumper, Turner entertains NME for an hour with a boyish and mischievous charm; his few concessions to age include a formal, paisley-patterned silk scarf and some stubble. A gold link chain lays around his neck – a present from his grandfather that he’s worn everywhere since 2006 – and glints against the autumn sun. As he answers questions, Turner often leans back in his chair and starts re-enacting scenes, giving it some real gusto. No man this effortlessly funny is an accident – behind it all lies a bright, astute and often humorous songwriter.
Trying to discuss his lyrics – which, on ‘The Car’, are often uncharacteristically reflective – in the pub with Turner is a different matter, however, met mostly with some hesitant, yet endearing musings on personal growth. We briefly broach ‘Hello You’, which plays with high drama, and references Turner’s youth spent in north Sheffield – but like a big Hollywood production, what’s pizazz on camera is often pain behind the scenes. “I could pass for 17 if I just get a shave / And catch some Zzzs”, he sings at one point, only half-jokingly. “So much of this new music is scratching at the past and how much of it I should hang on to,” he says. “I think that song is pretty on the nose… as uncomfortable as that may be.”
Arctic Monkeys on the cover of NME
It’s when describing ‘The Car’’s lushly arranged instrumental sections, however, that you can sense the cogs in Turner’s brain are starting to turn a little quicker. “Around the last album, the big story was like, ‘Wow, he’s got a piano’, which was true to an extent, but I wonder now looking at it, that it was this thing that I now do – recording ideas as you go – that got me going,” he says. His sudden excitement moves him to clench a trademark pair of black Ray Ban sunglasses so tightly in his hand, you fear there’s every chance they could suddenly snap.
Working on the album led to Arctic Monkeys scrapping their old rule that everything they recorded had to be playable live, opening up unseen possibilities. Turner experimented with the wah-wah guitar for both ‘Jet Skis On The Moat’ and the ridiculously funky ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’ – think ‘Station To Station’-era Bowie meets ELO – the latter being the moment “where everything clicked,” he affirms. Where a younger Arctic Monkeys would have raced through punky verses with lethal precision, ‘The Car’ marinates in the textures of upward sweeps and subtle, honeyed soul.
“I’m pretty happy with how ‘Tranquility Base..’ went down” – Alex Turner
As Turner speaks, it’s easy to picture the studio and imagine the Monkeys, once again, as teenagers in a garage: Turner the leader, Helders and O’Malley the jokers, Cook the near-silent but cunning sage – or, in Turner’s words: “Jamie remains the gatekeeper of the band, as it were.” These days, Cook is the brilliantly straight-faced foil – usually wearing a suit and sunglasses onstage, rocking gently from side to side as he churns out weighty riffs – to Turner’s loose, playful showman.
“I think that’s the key difference maybe with [‘The Car’] and the last record… perhaps we didn’t quite have a grasp of the dynamics of the bigger, newer sounds we were exploring,” he says. “But playing together live again certainly helped us to get there, and we developed a better awareness of each other. You find yourself in a different place when you take the songs to a new setting beyond where they were recorded.”
Even if ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’’s complete stylistic overhaul was curious enough to unsettle fans of the band’s louder, scrappier early days, Turner remains adamant that it was the right move for the group at the time. “I’m actually pretty happy with how it went down,” he says today. “We achieved something that we may not have been able to in the past. I think it definitely gave us the confidence to go to a different place on a record.”‘ The Car’’s ‘Sculptures Of Anything Goes’ – the band’s darkest song yet, a beast of distortion and weighty electronics – even nods to the public’s mixed response to ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’: “Puncturing your bubble of relatability with your horrible new sound”.
He alludes to how, despite ‘AM’ being the band’s most commercially popular album – having gone platinum in the US – with its West Coast rap-inspired cadences and bass-heavy melodies, it also felt like a bold revamp for Arctic Monkeys at the time of its release. “‘Do I Wanna Know?’ felt like a departure from everything that we had done before – and this was similar,” he says. “We had to almost acknowledge that our sound still had a little grease in its hair, and a bit of aggressiveness.”
“I don’t think much has changed within the band since the start” – Alex Turner
Turner says, however, that when Arctic Monkeys played the 26,000-capacity Foro Sol venue in Mexico City in March 2019 as one of the final shows on that tour, it felt like a “brilliant send-off” to what had been their most artistically challenging period. Backstage at that same show, Turner began to “sketch out” demos for ‘The Car’, with the idea that they “could close our shows.” He continues: “I found this footage of me playing a song backstage at that gig, and I thought, ‘I’m going to bottle the energy for the new record.’ It was raw, and full of downstrokes guitar.”
The songs from Foro Sol were eventually scrapped, but if anything, that night proved that the ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ era had certainly unlocked a more lighthearted side to the band than we had seen in several years. Clips of Turner pretending to lose his train of thought as the twinkling keys of ‘One Point Perspective’ fade out – in tandem with the song’s final lyric – have since been memed into oblivion. It’s a simple, yet persistently effective act: each time, he looks suddenly blank, scratches his chin, and points absently in the air as though trying to remember something. “I don’t think it’s even a choice at this point. When that spotlight centres itself on me, I just can’t help myself,” he says.
Why did the routine start in the first place? Turner’s face curls into a convincing knot of embarrassment. “You know what? I ask myself the same question every 24 hours,” he responds.
Credit: Zackery Michael
In August, Arctic Monkeys formally introduced their new era by headlining Reading & Leeds for the third time in their career, and drew in one of the festival’s biggest crowds in the process. Capping off a remarkable summer of huge outdoor shows across Europe, the weekend proved that a new, young, wildly committed generation of Monkeys fans had come to the fore, many of whom arrived via TikTok or streaming services, partly due to the recent stratospheric success of ‘505’ – the first Monkeys track to fully showcase their emotional depth as performers.
Lifted from 2007’s ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ album, the surging indie-rock track has recently surpassed hits from Eminem and Coldplay, clocking in an average of 1.7 million plays a month on Spotify alone. The stats are even more impressive when you consider that the band have actively chosen to shun social media throughout their career – it’s almost as though they can’t help gaining worldwide attention.
For Turner, seeing audiences continue to react passionately to encore closer ‘505’ has been “genuinely moving”, but he’s bemused by the revival that has come around in the first place. “Without having ‘505’ at the end of our shows for a few years around 2008, I’m not sure if it would have found the new life it has now,” he says. “I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m taking credit [for the revival] – even if it wasn’t totally unexpected, the attention around [‘505’] is really quite special.”
“The renewed attention around ‘505’ is really quite special” – Alex Turner
Arctic Monkeys’ recent live performances have also seen them bring out rarities from their back catalogue, including a moodier rendition of ‘Humbug’ standout ‘Potion Approaching’, and ‘That’s Where You’re Wrong’, a fuzzed-out singalong from the unfairly overlooked ‘Suck It And See’ era. Switching up the setlist has made the band appreciate what they’ve achieved up to this point, Turner explains: “There’s quite a lot of room now for us to unlock songs and these other little things from the past,” he says. “I have almost, like, a PDF in my mind of what we could work on.” His eyebrow arches in confusion. “Wait, it wouldn’t be a PDF, would it? I think I meant to say a spreadsheet…”
It’s this endearing playfulness and intimacy to Turner that makes his disbelief at Arctic Monkeys’ current stature, 20 years into their career, seem genuine. Next summer, they’ll play a full stadium tour across the UK for the first time ever in their career, including two huge hometown shows in Sheffield at Hillsborough Park. Better still, there’s a Glasto-shaped hole in the touring schedule, too.
The scale of these shows is already toying with Turner: “It wouldn’t have made sense for us to play stadiums before this album, and I don’t think we were mentally ready for it up until now,” he says. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself and say that some of our songs ‘belong’ in a stadium, but they could definitely hang out in a stadium.”
He says that they won’t be taking a string section on the forthcoming tour; instead, the band will be assisted by extra keys and synth. Turner is confident that the new album will translate live, and goes on to liken the rich emotional depth across ‘The Car’ to the searing, heart-raising two-minute guitar breakdown that wraps up ‘A Certain Romance’, the crowning achievement from their debut album. “I remember when we were recording ‘A Certain Romance’ and having a conversation with the producer about the final guitar solo,” he says. “There’s something that happens at the end of that track where we break some rules in a single moment. We focused on the [emotional] effect of the instrumentals over the words – and I feel like we’ve been trying to do that again and again since then.”
Are you still proud of that song?
“Yeah,” he replies immediately. “If anything, for the fact that [‘A Certain Romance’] showed that we did actually have these ambitions beyond what we once thought we were capable of. Back then, we would struggle with the idea of adding anything more to the songs; but here, there’s some guitar that goes high, and then comes back in.”
“‘A Certain Romance’ showed ambition beyond what we thought we were capable of” – Alex Turner
Across the table, he begins to play the air guitar, gleefully wriggling around in his seat. For a moment, it’s as though Turner appears spookily untouched by time: eyes bright, wide, and inquisitive; a flash of youthful, riotous joy writ large across his face. He continues: “When we recorded [‘A Certain Romance’] we were all like, ‘Woah, woah, woah…” He raises his hands above his head once more. “‘What have we done here?’ Pushing the music that far out from what we’d done before initially felt contentious, to say the least.’”
Turner looks happy, calm and content, and he should be – he’s still goofing around on the world’s biggest stages, still making music with his childhood best friends, and caring less about critical reception and more about enjoying himself. ‘The Car’ may see Arctic Monkeys traverse a far greater distance from their zippy indie beginnings than ever before, but there are no regrets, Turner says, before trailing off into another warm anecdote from the time the band spent at Butley Priory.
Credit: Zackery Michael
“The excitement and energy of everybody being together, sharing ideas in the same room, was quite powerful,” Turner says, briefly moving his gaze to the table below. “I noticed that, for instance, when I think about how it felt saying goodbye at the end of that session…” He catches himself, and looks faintly misty-eyed – though he’d never let us see that properly.
Turner turns to face us once more. “It’s just… you know, the air totally changes when the rest of the band leave. I don’t quite know what to call it, but I do know that being around them is how to get that magic – and I haven’t ever found it anywhere else,” he says, with a knowing smile.
Scientists fear they’ve found the next big pandemic threat — a virus that lives in African monkeys.
Simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV) causes devastating Ebola-like symptoms including internal bleeding and death.
It hijacks the immune system, disabling key defense mechanisms and breaking the body down cell by cell.
No cases have been detected in humans yet but it is ‘poised for a spillover’, according to US researchers.
By developing tests and monitoring the virus now ‘the global health community could potentially avoid another pandemic’, they said.
Scientists fear they’ve found the next big pandemic threat — a virus that lives in monkeys in Africa. It is similar to the Ebola virus (shown in stock image)
Experts at the University of Colorado Boulder are raising the alarm due to SHFV’s ‘compatibility… with humans’. In a lab study, they found virus is able to latch on to a human receptor with ease and make copies of itself
Experts at the University of Colorado Boulder are raising the alarm due to SHFV’s ‘compatibility… with humans’.
In a lab study, they found virus is able to latch on to a human receptor with ease and make copies of itself.
Senior author of the study Dr Sara Sawyer said: ‘This animal virus has figured out how to gain access to human cells, multiply itself, and escape some of the important immune mechanisms we would expect to protect us from an animal virus.
‘That’s pretty rare. We should be paying attention to it.’
In macaque monkeys, SHFV causes fever, fluid retention in the body’s tissue, anorexia, and hemorrhaging. The disease is almost always fatal within about two weeks.
The virus was first sequences in macaque monkeys in US and Russian labs in 1964
It appears to attack immune cells the same way as HIV, the precursor to which originated in a type of chimpanzee in Africa.
Author Professor Cody Warren, said: ‘The similarities are profound between this virus and the simian viruses that gave rise to the HIV pandemic.’
Reservoirs for the family of viruses that includes SHFV
What is simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV)?
SHFV is a highly pathogenic virus commonly found in non-human primates
It causes severe fever and internal bleeding and there is no cure
The first outbreaks were in the USSR and a US-based NIH lab in the 1960s
Since then, the Ebola-like virus has been detected in several types of primates including patas monkeys, vervet monkeys, and baboons
Experts fear that the virus could spill over from non-human primates to human cells, potentially causing a major public health issue
The symptoms in humans are expected to mirror those of Ebola: fever, vomiting, organ failure, and internal bleeding
No cases of the virus have been detected in humans, but a novel virus that spreads easily could cause a new pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic was instigated by a novel virus that the human immune system did not recognize.
He added: ‘Just because we haven’t diagnosed a human arterivirus infection yet doesn’t mean that no human has been exposed. We haven’t been looking.’
The researchers focused their work on a family of viruses called arteriviruses that typically circulate among pigs and horses but are not studied enough in non-human primates.
They zeroed in on simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), a type of arterivirus which causes a lethal disease similar to Ebola virus disease.
It was sequenced in the 1964 after simultaneous outbreaks in US and Soviet Russian labs, likely due to introduction of captive infected African apes.
It has caused deadly outbreaks in captive macaque monkey colonies since the early 1960s.
In the last decade, several scientists have been hunting for simian arteriviruses in nature.
A broad range of African monkeys carry high viral loads of arteriviruses, often without symptoms.
Researchers have yet to determine what the natural host species is for SHFV
No human infections have been detected yet, according to the report published Friday in the science journal Cell.
The pathogen’s ability to multiply rapidly in the body has echoes of the coronavirus.
Before winter 2019, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, had never been detected in humans.
It was a novel virus believed to have jumped from bats to an intermediary animal before spilling over to humans.
The never-before-seen virus ravaged people’s inexperienced immune systems and spread unabated for months.
The same is possible for another highly contagious novel virus.
‘COVID is just the latest in a long string of spillover events from animals to humans, some of which have erupted into global catastrophes,’ Dr Sawyer said.
Covid’s ability to spread so easily among humans without ever being detected before led many high profile scientists to question whether it was the result of an accidental leak from a virology institute in the city at the epicentre of the Covid pandemic, Wuhan.
In the Sacred Monkey Forest of Bali, food is everywhere and masturbation is rampant.
The thousand or so long-tailed macaques that live in this hotbed of hedonism have it really, really good.
Every day, 10,000 tourists wander through the sanctuary on their way to three local temples, feeding the monkeys as they go. Park staff also give the creatures three regular meals of fruits and vegetables.
With full bellies and little else to worry about in their little garden of Eden, these monkeys have a whole lot of time for leisure – and self-indulgence is their main game.
In recent years, male and female macaques alike have been regularly spotted rubbing and tapping stones on their genitals, leading scientists to propose a “sex toy” hypothesis.
This hypothesis holds that the stones are being used by Balinese macaques for self-directed, tool-assisted masturbation, similar to what has been seen in chimps, porcupines, dolphins, and, well, us.
Unlike our own species, however, masturbation rarely leads to actual ejaculation for other male animals. This makes it hard to determine how much pleasure the monkeys are actually receiving from stone play.
That said, male macaques do get erections when rubbing or tapping their genitals with rocks, which doesn’t happen when they touch stones to other parts of their body.
What’s more, female macaques are quite picky about what shape of rocks they choose for self-pleasure, which indicates they are picking those most suited to the task at hand, like ones with sharp edges (!) or a grainy texture.
“Thus,” researchers conclude, “it can be confidently concluded that these actions are not incidental.”
“Overall,” they add, “our data partly supported the ‘Sex Toy’ hypothesis indicating that stone-directed tapping and rubbing onto the genital and inguinal area are sexually motivated behaviors.”
The study is based on video footage in the Sacred Monkey Forest, collected by scientists in the years between 2016 and 2019.
The authors collected hundreds of examples of tool-assisted masturbation by groups of local macaques during this time period.
Most of the monkeys observed rubbing or tapping stones on their genitals happened to be male, though there was no shortage of female monkeys giving it a go.
Among nonhuman primates, female masturbation is scarcely documented. This could be due to human bias, or the fact that it’s more difficult to tell when a female is sexually aroused. Or both.
It’s hard to say why macaques in Bali are using stones to touch themselves, but researchers think the simplest answer is probably the right one: it feels good.
After all, these monkeys have few other pursuits.
“I think we can probably confidently say that the free time they have as a result of provisioning, it’s a big explanation for [stone play],” evolutionary ecologist Camilla Cenni told Vice World News.
“But [free time] is not a sufficient explanation,” she added. “I think it’s only part of the story. The other part, it’s hard to pinpoint because you would have to see the first [monkey] doing it.”
Long-tailed macaques aren’t the only non-human animals that have been caught using possible ‘sex toys’.
Some animals even use other animals for sexual gratification. Male and female Japanese macaques were recently filmed jumping on the backs of deer and thrusting vigorously against their ride.
And headlines were made a few years ago when a male dolphin was caught using a dead fish for self-pleasure.
A hard, inanimate stone is a bit easier to manage. It’s a tool that macaques are used to handling. Playing with rocks is a regular feature of macaque society, possibly as a way to practice for real foraging or feeding attempts.
Over time, researchers suspect this adaptive play was co-opted into a non-functional behavior that offered short-term pleasure only.
Now, macaques in Bali are using their instinctual affinity for rocks for a different sort of play. And this one is a lot more fun.
The study was published in Ethology: International Journal of Behavioral Biology.
Monkeys in Indonesia get their rocks off using actual rocks, supporting what’s known as the sex toy hypothesis, a new study finds.
Researchers studying long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) found that the monkeys repetitively tapped and rubbed their genitals with stones to pleasure themselves, according to the study first reported by New Scientist (opens in new tab). This finding provides further evidence for the sex toy hypothesis, proposed by the same researchers in an earlier study, that presents the activity as a form of tool-assisted masturbation.
The team found that males and females of different age groups all used stones to play with themselves, but there was some variation among the groups: Female monkeys were pickier about the stones they used, while young males engaged in the activity the most. Researchers watching the monkeys usually didn’t have to wait long to observe the behavior.
“You do see this genital stone tapping and rubbing quite regularly,” lead author Camilla Cenni, a doctoral candidate at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, told Live Science. “They are not, of course, constantly doing it, but if you stop and see them and they start playing with stones, they are likely going to do it.”
Related: ‘Monkey gang’ member executed in Japan as marauding macaques run amok
Some macaque populations regularly manipulate stones as part of their behavioral repertoire, seemingly as a form of play. They carry stones around, rub them on surfaces and bash them together. This stone manipulation is likely cultural, because its only seen in certain populations, Cenni said.
The “self-directed tool-assisted masturbation” described in the new study likely stems from this wider stone use. However, it’s been documented in only one population of macaques in Bali, Indonesia.
“When we talk about tool use in animals, we normally think about survival-dependent instances,” Cenni said. For example, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use stones to crack nuts so they can eat them. “There is an increasing number of studies that are suggesting that using objects as tools doesn’t have to be a matter of survival. This is clearly an example.”
The new research builds on a study led by Cenni and published in the journal Physiology & Behavior in 2020. The study first proposed the sex toy hypothesis in male macaques, while the new research looked at males and females and their potential motivation.
Young males spent significantly more time engaging in the activity than mature males did. Mature males, in fact, were the least partial to stone masturbation, possibly because they had access to mature females. However, there was a lot of variation among individual macaques of both sexes. “Within those groups, you have monkeys that do it way more than others,” Cenni said.
The monkeys were urban-dwelling macaques living in and around the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in the town of Ubud. They are free-roaming and fed by people. The researchers suggested that the feeding might relax pressures on the monkeys to forage, leading them to engage more in the stone behaviors. In other words, they have more time on their hands than other monkeys, and they choose to spend it with the stones.
The study was published online Aug. 4 in the journal Ethology.
Monkeys are not to blame for the monkeypox outbreak that has triggered health alerts, including a national health emergency in the United States, as the viral disease has continued to spread, the World Health Organization said this week after reports of attacks against the animals in Brazil.
At least 10 monkeys were rescued last week in São José do Rio Preto in the Brazilian state of São Paulo after the authorities found signs they had been attacked or poisoned, out of fear of monkeypox transmission, according to the G1 news site in that country. Seven of the monkeys later died.
The police in São Paulo are investigating those cases and said the mistreatment of animals could be punishable by three months to one year in jail.
Despite the name, the risk of monkeypox transmission during this outbreak is centered on humans, not animals, Margaret Harris, a W.H.O. spokeswoman, said during a Tuesday news conference.
“What people need to know very clearly is the transmission we are seeing is happening between humans to humans,” she said. “It’s close-contact transmission. The concern should be about where it’s transmitting in the human population and what humans can do to protect themselves from getting it and transmitting it. They should certainly not be attacking any animals.”
The statement was prompted by a question at the news conference in Geneva about the recent monkey attacks in Brazil.
The virus was named after it was originally found in a group of laboratory monkeys in 1958 in Denmark, but rodents are thought to be the primary animal hosts for the virus, Ms. Harris said.
Some scientists and public health officials have called for a new name for the disease, citing racist overtones and stigmatization, but no official change has been announced. They say the current name could have “potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects” or erroneously link the virus solely to the African continent, when it is now an international crisis.
The W.H.O. is having ongoing conversations on what should be the right name for the virus, Ms. Harris said. She said an announcement would be coming soon.
“Any stigmatization of any person infected is going to increase the transmission,” Ms. Harris said. “Because if people are afraid of identifying themselves as being infected, then they will not get care and they will not take precautions and we will see more transmission.”
The monkeypox virus is primarily found in Central and West Africa, particularly in areas close to tropical rainforests — and rope squirrels, tree squirrels, Gambian pouched rats and dormice have all been identified as potential carriers.
People who get sick commonly experience a fever, headache, back and muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, and exhaustion. A rash that looks like pimples or blisters is also common. Transmission occurs with close physical contact and most commonly spreads once symptoms have appeared, about six to 13 days after exposure. A majority of cases this year have been in young men, many of whom self-identify as men who have sex with men.
The United States declared a national health emergency this month over the monkeypox outbreak, with more than 10,000 confirmed cases nationwide according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The W.H.O. activated its highest level of alert for monkeypox in July, with the number of international confirmed cases rising to more than 31,000 so far.
Two vaccines originally developed for smallpox can help prevent monkeypox infections, with Jynneos considered the safer choice. Supplies in the United States, however, have been limited. People can be vaccinated after exposure to the virus to prevent the development of the disease.
