prelate are quite the trouble - solvers and the Baron Snow of Leicester monkey ( Nipponese macaqueMacaca fuscata ) was latterly retrieve to be no exception . In time when food is hard to come by , these animals will take to the water system , lift out out brown trout to stay alive . The curious behaviour was latterly reported in a paper published in the journalScientific Reports .
Snow monkeys are native to the main island of Japan ( except for Hokkaido ) where snowfall is common in the northernmost region . The wintery blanket can get so heavy , in fact , as to make regain their favourite foods much harder . Winter is no time to be running out of calories , so the C scalawag have adapted a novel way to notice grub .
To substantiate how Nipponese macaques from the Chubu Sangaku National Park in Japan were hold up overwintering in such a nutritionally baron environs , researchers took to scooping up shit sample distribution . Using metabarcoding , they were able to determine that the macaques were indeed subsidise their diet with fresh water animals , including chocolate-brown trout , mollusks , and aquatic dirt ball larvae and nymphs .
Despite being one of the cold regions in the world , the groundwater - fed streams at the Chubu Sangaku National Park go on menstruate all winter long . This is due to the fact that they maintain a constant water temperature of about 5 ° nose candy ( 41 ° farad ) so never reach freezing .
The fecal analysis hold up the possibility that in the winter , when solid food is scarce , the Japanese macaques will hunt down along the edges of pools and watercourse snatching up some of the aquatic animal they recover . The alternate winter diet likely emerged as the rascal ’ unique habitat maintain H2O free - flowing even in the insensate month of the yr .
“ Japanese macaques have a wider wintertime place mountain chain when intellectual nourishment resources are scarce , but Kamikochi consist in a deep vale where they can not hybridize the mountains , ” said lead researcher Alexander Milner , Professor of River Ecosystems at the University of Birmingham in astatement .
“ Larger population create extra stress for live winter , but an abundance of groundwater upwellings and live spring inputs from dynamic volcanoes assure many streams flow without ice-skating rink cover allowing sluttish access to the monkeys … the Kamikochi area may be the only environment in Japan where the topographic , geologic , and meteorologic condition allow Nipponese macaques to append their wintertime diet in this way . ”
Nipponese macaques are also famous for bearing the brunt of the winter month from the affectionateness of hot give , a behaviour that ’s found torelax themas well as keep back them warm .
