Jo Setchell

Hello, I'm Jo Setchel.

I'm a professor of anthropology at Durham University.

I study mandrills, who are a very large, very colorful species of monkey that live in the rainforest of Gabon in Central Africa.

And the most peculiar thing that I have learned from studying those monkeys

is that they use their vibrant colour to avoid conflict, and that they have a scent gland on their chest which they rub against trees to advertise who they are, how high-ranking they are, and even their DNA.

It's hugely varied.

So if we think about primates, all of the primates, it can be from a long-term bond that lasts decades through to a relationship that lasts seconds.

The cutest relationship, I think, is the TT monkey.

So they're one of the ones that form very, very long-term pairs.

And as far as we know...

which is not very far, but as far as we know, they're relatively monogamous in those pairs, and they sit in trees and twine their tails around one another.

That's a romantic relationship.

They sit together and twine their tails around each other.

They're a very cryptic species, which means they hide a lot, so they hide in tangles of vines in the trees, but they always forget their tails.

So you walk around in the forest and just see these two tails hanging out of the forest, and you know where the titi monkeys are.

They're all favoured evolutionarily, which is why they exist.

But the kind of boring ecological answer is that it depends on the distribution of food.

And it depends how many females can live in a group.

And how many females can live in a group determines how many males can be added to that group.

So if there's enough food for just one animal, then a female has to live on her own.