page_title: Vervet monkey
section_title: Alarm calls and offspring recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Vervet monkey / Behaviour / Alarm calls and offspring recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: A vervet monkey and its baby
context_page_description: The vervet monkey, or simply vervet, is an Old World monkey of the family Cercopithecidae native to Africa. The term "vervet" is also used to refer to all the members of the genus Chlorocebus. The five distinct subspecies can be found mostly throughout Southern Africa, as well as some of the eastern countries. Vervets were introduced to Florida, St. Kitts, and Cape Verde. These mostly herbivorous monkeys have black faces and grey body hair color, ranging in body length from about 40 centimetres for females, to about 50 centimetres for males.
  In addition to behavioral research on natural populations, vervet monkeys serve as a nonhuman primate model for understanding genetic and social behaviors of humans. They have been noted for having human-like characteristics, such as hypertension, anxiety, and social and dependent alcohol use. Vervets live in social groups ranging from 10 to 70 individuals, with males moving to other groups at the time of sexual maturity. The most significant studies done on vervet monkeys involve their communication and alarm calls, specifically in regard to kin and group recognition and particular predator sightings.
context_section_description: Vervet monkeys have four confirmed predators: leopards, eagles, pythons, and baboons. The sighting of each predator elicits an acoustically distinct alarm call. As infants vervets learn to make the variety of calls from observation alone, without explicit tutelage. In experimentation with unreliable signalers, individuals became habituated to incorrect calls from a specific individual. Though the response was lessened for a specific predator, if an unreliable individual gives an alarm call for a different predator, group members respond as if the alarm caller is, in fact, reliable. This suggests vervet monkeys are able to recognize and to respond to not only the individual calling, but also to the semantics of what the individual is communicating. It is believed that vervet monkeys have up to 30 different alarm calls. In the wild vervet monkeys have been seen giving a different call when seeing a human being approaching, leading researchers to believe that vervet monkeys may have a way of distinguishing between different land and flight predators.
  Mothers can recognise their offspring by a scream alone. A juvenile scream will elicit a reaction from all mothers, yet the juvenile's own mother had a shorter latency in looking in the direction of the scream, as well as an increased duration in her look. Further, mothers have been observed to help their offspring in conflict, yet rarely aided other juveniles. Other mothers evidently can determine to which mother the offspring belongs. Individuals have been observed to look towards the mother whose offspring is creating the scream.
caption: A vervet monkey mother with infant
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