In a zoo environment, there is nothing particular that the encaged animals have to do. They are provided with food and water, so they spend all of their time socially interacting with one another. In the troop that I observed, I was amazed at the levels of similarity to human interaction in their free time. It seemed that each animal played a very similar social role in the family compared to a human family. The father of the family, the alpha male, was not very active at all during my time of observation. I only saw the male move once during the hour that I was there, and it was only a short distance. He kept to himself the entire time, and appeared very isolated from the rest of the troop. He seemed to let the mother handle most of the parental duties, such as caring for the infant, and watching out for the juvenile females. The adult female was similar to the male in that she didn't move much, but she seemed to be occupied while sitting on the ground. The mother seemed to be resting while the older sister (juvenile female) took the infant out to play. Although the mother was resting, she appeared to be keeping a close eye on the infant while she was away. The juvenile female that I observed shocked me in her similarity to a young human child. She was constantly moving around, playing with branches, climbing trees, and playing with her infant sister. At one point, she even climbed up about 30 feet into the air on a leafless tree, and sat at the top observing her surroundings. My initial reaction to the troop was amazement at how similar these creatures were to human beings. I came to the zoo with a pre-conceived notion that primates were much less civilized than humans, and had no real order to how they spent their time. What I did not expect was how visibly different each of their roles were in the troop, and how easy it was to recognize each one based on how they were behaving.
