Extent of encounter with an embedded food influences how it is processed by an urbanizing macaque species

What is it about?

Nonhuman species in urban regions face diverse challenges of accessing enclosed and synthetically processed anthropogenic food. We studied the effects of artificial treatments of peanut on its extraction and processing across frequency of encounter and familiarity to peanut. We found that the complexity of peanut processing methods enhanced with greater peanut encounter/familiarity but only with respect to specific form/state of peanut. It appears that as the frequency of encounter and possibly, dependence on extractible foods increases, processing methods become more efficient and inevitably, more complex. These findings are relevant to understand the processes of synurbization in populations of animals that encounter embedded anthropogenic foods, including ones that are synthetically manufactured.

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