UVP Report Issue 6 | 05.05.

2023
S. Mercier

 Team update

Welcome to Zonke 

Since the beginning of April, Zonke from Eastern Cape came to help us
collecting data on the urban monkeys in Simbithi. Thanks to her experience
and knowledge of the wild population of Mawana, Zonke learnt to
recognise all the individuals from Acacia group within a week while it
usually takes 2 months for a new reseracher to learn a group! She also
already knows how to collect data as we collect similar data than in IVP
with the wild monkeys, so that we can make some comparative studies. It
is such a pleasure to have her here and we hope that this first 2 months as
a research assitant here will be only the beginning of a long story ;)

Visit from Martina Zonke already collecting data © S. Mercier

This month, we also had the visit from another

Manon, Martina, Zonke & Stef following Savanna
master student from Sofia Forss (PI of UVP),
Martina, who came to spend few days on the coast
after being in the field in the Khalahari following
meerkats for few months. It was nice to show her
the behaviour of the vervets here in Simbithi.
Despite Acacia run away crossing the fence,
Savanna behaved really well accepting the whole
© S. Mercier
team to follow them simultaneously!

Tickets offered by Siya Kolisi

Since the beginning of the project, we are honoured to have Siya as one of our fan following our
research. While he supports us, he also offered us some tickets to go support him in return! Thanks!
Lucky us, the whole team went to watch the Sharks winning against Benetton! Well done 

The whole team enjoying a rugby match in Durban © M. Desaivres

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 Talk for Probus in Simbithi

This month, Stef has been invited by Ken Lever to give a

presentation on the work both IVP & UVP are doing to PROBUS
(Professional Retired Organization of Business Executives), a
worldwide organization which provides an environment for
retirees across the globe to connect and participate in a variety
of events. Always so interesting to meet people from different
background! Bringing awareness to people about the human-
vervet relationships, and knowledge about vervet monkeys is
another way we help to change people minds, hopefully also
improving the current ‘monkeys problems’ in South Africa.
Stephanie presenting the vervet monkeys © G. Fowls

 Monkeys update

Acacia Savanna

This month Acacia has been behaving well despite
that they like to cross the fence quite a bit to go enjoy
the forest patch outside Simbithi. Only positive
reassuring news regarding the monkeys’ health from
this group: Cherry fully recovered from her car
accident from last month and we can now use her
small kink in the tail has a new distinctive feature that
allows us to recognise her from a distance. The
injuries of Quince & Ziziphus on the arms also healed
completely, we barely can see that something
happened to them. They really have impressive
healing power!
Even though we have been following Savanna for
more than 4 months now, we still discover new
areas of their home ranges! They took us all the way
to the forest between Honeysuckle and Cats whisker
lanes, leading to quite few encounters with
neighbouring groups, including Acacia.
Unfortunately, the beautiful dominant male Whisky
got mildly injured. While Stef was following them,
he suddenly had an open wound under his left back
foot. It was still bleeding and he was limping a bit
last Friday (28th of April) but Manon couldn’t even
see he got injured the following week!

Ziziphus from Acacia © L. Ellington Whisky from Savanna © S.Mercier

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 o First monkey walk in Simbithi 

In April, Stef offered the first ‘monkey walk’ where she took some residents from Simbithi to discover the
work we are doing at UVP. While we tried to follow Acacia who was running a bit away from us, and changing
pathways all the time, we hope that all our interesting discussions allowed our dear residents to understand
the behaviours of the monkeys a bit better. As it was rather succesfull and there is a bit of demand, some
other ones will be organised soon, keep an eye open in the WhatsApp group as places will be limited!

Thank you to Rachel, Sara, Tom and Sue who came to enjoy this walk! And thanks to our little star Yucca from Acacia © S. Mercier

o Some interesting rare behaviours observed this month

Unfortunately, we did not manage to capture this very

interesting behaviour, but this month we discovered a
baby from Acacia who started playing alone in the
same way dog would do. He was running and turning
around to try to grab and bite his own tail, a behaviour
that Stef never seen in her many years of field work
with wild monkeys!

Picture taken from Facebook

 Other news

o The website for UVP is born!

We are delighted to announce you that a new website has been created to describe the Urban Vervet Project
and to share all information with anyone interested in the world! Please feel free to have a look at it and
share this website around you: Urbanvervetproject.weebly.com.

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 o Citizen science data – many thanks to all of you!

154 days have passed since we started the citizen data science in the group, big thanks to all of you! In April,
a special thanks goes to Blake Phillips, who is our most active citizen with 13 observations shared in the
group, all your reporting are truly appreciated  Also, following the interactions reported in the group, the
team is busy going from house to house to filled up questionnaires about human-vervet relationships
occurring in Simbithi for Manon’s master project. Many thanks to all of you who already opened up your
doors in such a warm and friendly way, we truly appreciate your support! For those who have many
interesting stories to share with us and that we haven’t been coming knocking on your door yet, please feel
free to contact directly Manon or Stephanie on WhatsApp to arrange a meeting with us so that we can come
hear all your interesting stories too before Manon study ends at the end of May ;)

Map showing the locations of monkeys reported by Manon smiling when working
the residents of Simbithi. © S. Mercier – GAIA Gps 05.05.23 © S. Mercier

o 2/3 bedroom flat needed for the growing UVP team!

Since Manon and Zonke will soon finishing up their work, we will welcome 3 new master students this
coming winter: Paige, Adrian & Joey. Despite we had a lovely cosy place that we were lucky to have since
November thanks to Elayne, we are thus looking for a 2/3 bedroom flat in Simbithi, around 20’000R. Ideally,
we would like it to be furnished, and to move in for June/July. If you hear anything, please contact Stephanie,
your help will also be much appreciated there!

o The WhatsApp group is still active 

As always, feel free to share the following link and the QR to all
interested residents in joining the group to help us collect citizen data:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/GnL28i40OHb8GF61nukN9M