Nicobar Long-tailed Macaque - Behaviour

Behaviour

The Nicobar long-tailed macaque is a frugivore, with its principal diet consisting of fruits and nuts. In common with other crab-eating macaques it turns to other sources of food—typically in the dry and early rainy tropical seasons—when the preferred fruits are unavailable. This alternate diet includes young leaves, insects, flowers, seeds, and bark; it is also known to eat small crabs, frogs and other creatures taken from the shorelines and mangroves when foraging in these environments. Macaque populations which live in areas close to human settlements and farms frequently raid the croplands for food, and have even entered dwellings in search of sustenance if not actively discouraged by human presence.

Like all primates, it is a social animal, and spends a good deal of time interacting and grooming with other group members. It typically forages for food in the morning, resting in groups during the midday hours and then a subsequent period of foraging in the early evening before returning to designated roosting trees to sleep for the night.

It moves quadrupedally on the ground as well as in the canopy, and it is capable of leaping distances of up to 5 metres (16 ft) from tree to tree. Like other long-tailed macaques, it is also a proficient swimmer and may use this ability when threatened to avoid arboreal or terrestrial predators.