Formosan Rock Macaque: Survival Games at NSYSU, Matrilineal Power, and the Truth About Taiwan's Ten-Thousand-Year Settlers

30-second overview: The Formosan Rock Macaque (Macaca cyclopis) is the only native primate on this island other than Homo sapiens, with a strictly hereditary matrilineal hierarchy. Human-monkey conflict at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) and Mount Shou (壽山) traces back to highly intelligent macaques that have folded human behavior into their survival logic under the pressure of overlapping habitats. This article starts from 19th-century discovery history, dives into a power core ruled by "queens," and rethinks what these ten-thousand-year settlers really face in the "post-conservation era."

At National Sun Yat-sen University, there is a peculiar local "delivery culture." When the food-delivery rider arrives at the dorm gate and a student comes downstairs to take the bag, what they're often holding is a BB gun or a long wooden stick.¹ Campus security hasn't deteriorated — the students are armed against a group of nimble "seniors" ever ready to ambush a sandwich or a bubble tea. The Formosan Rock Macaque. In 2022, a viral video showed an NSYSU professor wildly swinging a broomstick to drive macaques off his car roof, his motion compared to the video-game warrior Lü Bu, and the clip was nicknamed "Broomstick vs. Naughty Monkey."²

Yet when we complain that monkeys break into offices and dial campus extensions,³ or that they "ambush" delivery riders outside dorms, we tend to forget the chronological order. This decades-long campus contest is, in fact, a deep tragedy of habitat, power, and mistaken learning.

The First Encounter in 1862: From "Civilized Game Meat" to Scientific Discovery

The Formosan Rock Macaque entered the Western scientific record through the 19th-century British naturalist Robert Swinhoe. In 1862, the then-Vice Consul stationed in Taiwan caught one of these long-tailed primates in Fongshan (today's Kaohsiung area), and formally announced it to the scientific community the following year.⁴

Interestingly, Swinhoe wrote bluntly in his notes: "Their flesh is sweet and tender."⁵ In that era, the macaque was both game meat to islanders and a novel species to naturalists. Swinhoe observed how nimbly they moved among rocky cliffs and named the species Macaca cyclopis. He could hardly have imagined that, a century and a half later, the creatures he saw as "game" would become one of the most contested social issues on this island.

A Queen in Charge: The Truth Behind the "Monkey King" Myth

The public usually imagines that a troop is ruled by the strongest male — the "monkey king" — but this is a thorough misunderstanding. The Formosan Rock Macaque has a textbook matrilineal society: the core of the troop is a group of related females, and their power is hereditary. If the mother is high-ranking, her daughter is born with priority access to food, space, and "grooming services."⁶

The bulky males? In the troop, they're more like a "floating population." After becoming adults at three to five years old, males must leave the natal troop and become wandering "lone monkeys." They have to demonstrate enough sincerity and stability to be accepted by another female troop and become "core males." Their role is closer to that of "neighborhood watchman": guarding against danger and mediating internal disputes. If they don't perform well — or after staying for around four years to avoid inbreeding — they pack up and move on, looking for the next place to settle.⁶

📝 Curator's Note: In the macaque world, power is hereditary by blood, not earned by combat strength. The macaques "blocking the road" outside NSYSU are often young males still learning the social rules and trying to integrate into a new troop.

Social Insurance: Grooming Goes Way Beyond Cleanliness

On the lawns of Mount Shou you often see macaques combing through each other's fur. The behavior is often misread as "picking lice," but in fact grooming is the macaque's most important social tool. Through grooming, low-ranking individuals can "pay protection money" to high-ranking ones in exchange for safety; same-rank individuals build alliances.

This is a complex "social insurance" system. Studies show that adult females spend significant time on grooming interactions, ensuring they have allies on hand when conflicts erupt.⁷ As for the "white granules" that get popped into the mouth during grooming — these are usually salt secretions or skin flakes; for the macaque, they're a small reward after the social act.

The Inheritance of Food-Snatching Culture: The Cost of High Intelligence

Food-snatching even propagates across generations within troops. These highly intelligent "anthropologists" learned the weaknesses and habits of humans. Studies in Taroko and on Mount Shou found that juvenile macaques observe how their mothers grab plastic bags from tourists' hands, and learn to recognize which packaging (e.g., a convenience-store sandwich) signals tastier food.⁸

The cost of this "mistaken learning" is bloody. In 2021, a Mount Shou cleaner had her tendon torn while eating bread when a macaque grabbed for it.⁹ When humans feed macaques out of love or curiosity, they are effectively telling the animals: "human equals food source." This makes the macaque view humans as a kind of "vending machine" they can demand from — and once the vending machine refuses to dispense (no food given), the macaque escalates to more aggressive action.

📝 Curator's Note: When we label wildlife as "pests," we often forget who knocked on whose door first. On Mount Chai, the macaques arrived tens of thousands of years ago — we encroached on their home, then blamed them for not knowing the school rules.

The Post-Conservation Era: A Tug-of-War Between Law and Violence

In 2019, the Formosan Rock Macaque was downgraded from "protected" to "general" wildlife. The decision reflected stable population numbers, but it also produced an unexpected social-psychological side effect. After the downgrade, abuse incidents proliferated — including macaques whose paws had been severed by traps, then maliciously splashed with red paint.¹⁰

Today, Kaohsiung City has passed a Wildlife Conservation Self-Government Ordinance, allowing fines of up to NT$10,000 for feeding macaques in designated zones.¹¹ But law is only a baseline. At NSYSU, the school has begun promoting "monkey-proof canvas bags" and "food out of sight" education, trying to recover the lost line of mutual respect between ten-thousand-year settlers and modern students.

Conclusion: Relearning How to Be Neighbors

Solving human-monkey conflict isn't about removing the monkeys; it's about changing human behavior. The Formosan Rock Macaque is the closest relative to us on this island; their intimacy in mutual grooming and tenderness toward infants display the most primal emotions of primates.

Rather than treating them as thugs, we should relearn what "appropriate distance" means. After all, on this shared land, we and they are both residents of the island.

Further Reading

• Zoo and Exhibition Animal Ethics — A discussion of captive-animal ethics that complements the "neighbor" framing of wild macaques in this article.
• Taiwan Zoos — Shou Shan Zoo and the Mount Shou macaque population coexist in the same geography.
• Robert Swinhoe (史溫侯) — The British naturalist who named Macaca cyclopis in 1862; the prehistory of footnotes ⁴⁵.
• Malayan Night Heron — Another case of a wild animal entering human activity zones — but the opposite of the macaque: the macaque approaches humans largely for food incentives, while the night heron's move into the city is closer to habitat expansion. Humans accidentally built urban niches that resemble low-elevation forest.

References