Monkey Addendum…

On leaving “snow monkey park”, you walk through a small headquarter building that has a few wooden tables and benches, windows that look down on the river, and noodle soup and tea if you are cold.  On the wall, you can’t help but notice the black and white pictures of past Alpha males like CEO’s of an older company.  

It got us thinking about what the Monkey’s would hang on the wall if up to them, instead of us.  While the Alphas are most typically male, they live in matrilineal societies and Alphas can achieve their position, or hold onto it longer, if they come from a dominant female lineage.

Like humans, they innovate and learn from imitation.  Further south in Japan, a young female in the 50's named Imo (Potato in Japanese) was the first to wash her food in the river, and then even began dipping her clean food into salty sea water for flavor.  Others followed until only the oldest were still just brushing off their food before eating.  In 1963, it was another young female named Mukubili that first ventured into the hotsprings…  Today in these two troupes, Monkeys respectively wash and season their food or sit and enjoy the hot springs on a cold day.

Would these monkeys hang pictures of the CEOs and/or the young innovators that moved their troop forward?  Just one of the strange thoughts one contemplates while drinking tea and watching snow monkeys enjoy the warmth of a natural Japanese hot spring.