This scientific documentary focuses on the behavior of wild tool using bearded capuchin monkeys living in Fazenda Boa Vista (Gilbués, Piauí State, Brazil).
The research on this field site, located in the ecotone between Cerrado and Caatinga, has been carried out by an international team of senior researchers from Brazil, United States and Italy that launched the EthoCebus Project in 2005 (see www.ethocebus.net). This project investigates the ecology, foraging, social and cognitive behavior of capuchin monkeys.
"The bearded capuchin monkeys of Fazenda Boa Vista" was awarded by the students, in the fourth edition of the "Rome Docscient Festival", for the "high scientific content and the great beauty of the images"
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The goals of the documentary are (1) to present to a large audience the discoveries made by the researchers of the EthoCebus project on two groups of wild bearded capuchin monkeys and (2) to provide rigorous/scientific interpretations of their behavior. The DVD is organized in several chapters. The main part is constituted by five chapters entitled The ecology of wild capuchins, Stone tool use, Infant care and social behavior, Feeding and foraging activities and Becoming proficient foragers. This part provides a general overview of the ecology and behavior of this population; it also pays special attention to the use of stone tools to crack open encased food, since this makes the Fazenda Boa Vista population particularly worth studying and has been the focus of most of our research being a special feature of our population.
In addition, there are three more chapters. Early days illustrates with still pictures the beginning of the research (in 2003) when researchers first saw these capuchins using stone tools and started to investigate this population systematically. The Field experiments on tool use chapter illustrates some of the innovative research carried out to investigate stone tool use. The Humans and environment chapter provides information about where the field site is and about the people living in this area and the threat posed by deforestation and intensive agriculture.
