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Bathing Apes before Hype Beasts


This week’s post comes after a very stressful week for me; exams, papers, and scrambling to get ready for graduation. At the end of Thursday I ended up going home for Alec’s birthday (my little brother who just turned 14), the weekend, by contrast was very relaxing. Alec is much different than me or my older brother, probably because of the large age gap, he is obsessed with brand name clothes and shoes and the like. While having dinner on Saturday, we began to ridicule him for looking up and dreaming about $2000 Nikes, Supreme gear and Bathing Ape, so while looking for a topic for this blog, the latter brand took my interest,
Above is a video about Japan’s famous “bathing apes”; the macaques. The video starts off describing the history of how a group of macaques started using naturally occurring hotsprings in the colder northern region of japan. The macaques began using these hotsprings in human establishments, so to keep both groups happy, locals built a site just for the macaques, and they’ve been there ever since. Benefits for the macaques include the obvious protection from the cold as well as lower stress levels, as studied by researchers at Kyoto University. The macaques stress levels were taken by measuring glucocorticoid levels in their feces.
Besides being a tourist attraction, these bathing apes are a unique example of animals taking advantage of such sources. Throughout this semester I have been writing about conservation and a paper I wrote for my science writing class went through in length the benefits of leaving spaces in our developments where animals can coexist with us. This video is an optimistic look at how compromises can be made with our expansion without encroaching on the space of other organisms.
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  1. UnknownApril 17, 2018 at 9:45 AM

    I try my best not to anthropomorphize animals, but it's impossible to not find these bathing macaques endearing and to relate to them completely. This is an amazing instance of animals incorporating an aspect of human culture, bathing in hot springs to the point that it is now an integral part to how this population of macaques live. They don't seem to bothered by all the human tourism, and the humans obviously don't mind. Sometimes we forget that animals can feel stress just like we do and appreciate relaxation, as shown in the monkeys' decrease in glucocorticoid levels. I think I would be just as laid back if I had these hot springs at my disposal. If only humans and animals could live in this kind of harmony around the rest of the world in other ecosystems.

    - Anna Korn from Science Writing

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