Was up there (armed with a length of aluminium shelving support) yesterday but saw no monkeys, probably because of the higher weekend level of human disturbance, which I’ll try and avoid in future too. Karaoke FFS!
This contrasts with Friday evening when, coming off the mountain in the gathering dusk about an hour after the monkey-rock-ant Triangle Of Terror Dilemma, I suprised /was surprised by a troupe of about 50 individuals hanging out at an observation pavilion. To my relief they went for the high ground double quick, limiting themselves to a bit of vocal abuse when they were on the cliff-top above me.
There are several bat caves in that area. I wondered if primates might use them for shelter in heavy rain. Primates (especially chimps and gorillas) are of course similar to us genetically so they would seem obvious routes for novel human infections, as reported for HIV.
Bat caves are fairly unpleasant places though so they probably avoid them, preferring observation pavilions when available, which are, of course, also used by people to prepare and eat food.
There some literature on it, as you might expect. For example gorillas and chimps apparently suffer Ebola die-offs from eating fruit contaminated by fruit-bat saliva.
Leroy EM, Kumulungui B, Pourrut X, et al. Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus Nature, 438 (2005), pp. 575-576
Is there any known “Bush Meat” monkey-eating tradition or current practice in Taiwan?
