Bizarre monkey and ant behaviour

By Barbara Fenig:

In St. Kitts, vervet monkeys have developed a penchant for alcohol by eating fermented sugarcane for the past three hundred years. Recently, the monkeys have started to scavenge local resorts and sip from tourists’ glasses to get their fix.

This unusual population of ants herds packs of aphids and sucks out the honeydew nectar that the aphids produce. The ants also protect the aphids from predators, like the ladybug, in an act of predatorial symbiosis.

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