The biology that makes rhesus macaques so good at city life
Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are dietary generalists, which is the single most important fact about them. Where a specialist frugivore needs intact forest, a rhesus monkey can extract nutrition from chapati scraps, temple prasad, market waste, and raw sugarcane with equal efficiency. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Primatology found that urban rhesus populations in northern India had significantly higher body weights than their forest counterparts, a direct consequence of calorie-dense human food replacing the leaner diet of wild forage.
