Whence
Snow monkey (Japanese macaque)
Animal

Where does Snow monkey (Japanese macaque) come from?

The snow monkey, or Japanese macaque, comes from Japan, where it lives on the islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. No other monkey lives farther north or in a colder climate, and some troops spend months each year in deep snow.

The northernmost monkey

Japanese macaques live on three of Japan's four main islands, but not on Hokkaido. The northernmost troops live on the Shimokita Peninsula at the tip of Honshu, and the southernmost, on Yakushima Island, belong to a subspecies of their own. Their forests range from subtropical in the south to subarctic in the northern mountains. They do not hibernate; thick fur keeps them warm through harsh winters. They have brownish-grey fur, pinkish-red faces and short tails, and a 1989 study estimated that about 114,000 lived in the wild.

Monkeys in the hot spring

The famous bathers live at Jigokudani, 'Hell's Valley', in Nagano Prefecture, where hot water bubbles out of the frozen ground at 850 metres and snow lies for four months a year. After logging cleared their mountain forests, the monkeys came down to raid orchards, and instead of shooting them a local man began feeding them. The monkey park opened in 1964. Around then a curious young monkey climbed into an inn's outdoor bath, adults copied it, and later the park built a bath for the monkeys alone.

Why people think of the Himalayas

Snow and monkeys bring to mind the high mountains of mainland Asia, and macaques do live there: the Assam macaque lives in mountain forests up to 4,000 metres in north-eastern India. But the snow monkey is a separate species found only in Japan. It is called the snow monkey because some troops live where snow covers the ground for months each year, and foreign visitors to Jigokudani commonly use the name.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Japanese macaque ↗ · animaldiversity.org ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Jigokudani Monkey Park ↗ · ja.wikipedia.org ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Assam macaque ↗

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