UVP Report

S. Mercier Issue 7 | 04.06.2023

 Team update

Manon’s birthday 

On the 4th of May, we celebrated Manon’s birthday with a delicious

brownie baked by Stef that we ate at the Heron Center  The monkeys
behaved well and did not come to disturb us so we could eat this
birthday cake peacefully, enjoying the pleasant scenery of Simbithi
without needing to ‘work’ and look after the naughty cheeky monkeys
all the time.

© Stephanie Mercier

Sofia runs for UVP

On the 6th of May, Sofia participated to the ‘Zurich SOLA-Stafette’, an

academic relay race around the city of Zurich and over the adjacent hills
around the northern end of Lake Zurich organized by the Academic
Sports Association Zurich (ASVZ). The SOLA, which is around 120 km long
today, takes place every year at the beginning of May and consists of 14
sections, which are completed by 14 different runners from up to 1000
teams, with two sections being obligatory women's sections. Not sure
whether it is her drink or wearing the famous blue UVP hat that gave her
wings to run, but well done Sofia, what a nice way to support us from
Zurich 

© Sofia Forss

Switching from monkeys to bushbucks

One of the benefits of working along with the environmental team of Simbithi, is that we are informed
about all other events around the wildlife that are happening in the estate. So for once, the whole team
dropped the vervet monkeys to go support Simbithi by volunteering on a bushbuck counts. While Zonke
had fun counting the bushbucks on the road from the golf cart of Shirley Wittig, Manon counted all the
ones she could find along the Mnegi trail and Stef welcomed her friend Martin to go count the bushbucks
along the main fence from the beach gate to Ballito gate. What a lovely morning!

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 Monkeys update
Acacia
This month has been a bit crazy monkey wise. Acacia
keeps on encountering many other groups: from Cat
Whisker’s, to another group at the end of Silver Oak
and more regularly, their main neighbour Savanna
who is chasing them in their own home range!
Despite the encounters are rather ‘friendly’, with
some monkeys inspecting or even mating with the
other members from the other group, Acacia had to
retreat quite a bit and have been chased by Savanna
even outside of the estate! Not easy for the
researchers to keep on collecting data but quite a
cool behaviour to observe: after using the glass in the
King Fisher community center, Savanna this time used
some wooden fence to face off with Acacia! However,
unfortunately, some monkeys get injured during
these fights… Ziziphus ended up with an injured back
leg foot that he is taking care of, and Rosa was
bleeding and had a small open wound on her
forearm, probablu being bitten by a monkey from the
opposite group. Luckily these monkeys have
incredible healing power and these injuries were gone
few days later.
© Martin Reed
Savanna
Despite Savanna already have quite a nice big home
range, they keep on venturing further, mostly into
Acacia’s territory, leading to few between-group
encounters. However, while Acacia managed to
escape by running outside of Simbithi, Savanna has
not been seen running away from the estate, which
allows Manon to keep on collecting focal data on all
adults for 20 minutes. During May, we managed to
collect 99 focal data on Savanna, while we collected
66 in Acacia due to many encounters and the
monkeys being outside of the estate. But well done
team, this is great data that will allow us to discover
in details all what the monkeys are doing, hopefully
leading to some interesting results that could have
implication for their management inside Simbithi.
But before that, we need some time to clean the
data and run the statistical analyses, so patience,
results will be coming out soon ;)
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 Ziziphus checking his foot © S.Mercier Savanna chasing Acacia out of the fence © Zonke

o Second monkey walk in Simbithi – reported to June!

Despite Stef tried to organise a second monkey walk for the residents of the estate on the 13 th of May, we
had to report it due to the weather conditions as it was raining. But after the positive feedbacks of the
first one, and the motivation of some other residents to join too, we will organise another one in June.
Please check the monkey WhatsApp group as information will be posted there according to the planning
of the team and the monkeys’ behaviour ;)

o Some interesting rare behaviours observed this month

During one of the focal follow, Stef observed Cherry, an adult female
from the Acacia group, feeding in an interesting way. She was removing
the bark of a tree, peeling it nicely, to feed on the insects that were
hiding underneath. Unfortunately, Stef could not see whether it was
ants, termites or something else but Cherry spend more than 10
minutes eating this delicious meal!

© S.Mercier

Another very interesting behaviour that has been reported by a

resident of Simbithi, is vervet monkeys ‘fishing’ a bird feeder to
access the seeds provided for the birds. As this is a special innovative
clever behaviour, the resident kindly accepted one of our camera trap
to record this special behaviour to determine how often does it
happens, and by who is this behaviour performed. While we think
that this behaviour might have been invented by one individual, the
whole group might soon learn socially by observing this individual
performing the trick to access the seeds.
© Photo taken by the resident

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  Other news

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

194 days have now passed since we started the citizen data science in the group, big thanks to all of you!
In May, Blake Phillips remains at the top as our most active citizen with 22 observations shared in the
group! Thank you so much, all your reporting are truly appreciated  However, the number of points on
the map being so many and covering the whole estate, there is no point on sharing the map anymore but
all the data are still looked after and will be analysed in a near future ;)

o End of the questionnaire – a big thank to all the warm welcomes received!

The whole team is really grateful about the way we have been received by all the 100 residents that
participated in our questionnaires about human-vervet relationships occurring in Simbithi. Many thanks
for taking the time to answer our many questions, we do hope that the results will be useful for both the
Science and for the whole estate in order to have more peaceful relationships with these monkeys 
Manon is currently busy analysing these data and writing a report for her Master thesis, so results will be
revealed in the next newsletter ;)

o UVP found a new place for the students 

After a bit of a hunt, Stef found the next place to be for the students of UVP: in one of the flat of the
Sabuti complex! Many thanks to Linda our new landlord that accepted to welcome us and is very
supporting of the whole research we are doing here. We are looking forward to move in the flat early
July! The next step might be looking for a second hand golf cart, if you hear anything about that, thanks
for contacting Stef directly, always appreciate your help so much ;)

o The WhatsApp group is still active 

Please 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