{"id":505461,"date":"2026-04-22T18:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.net\/en\/uncategorized\/gibraltar-monkeys-eat-earth-to-counteract-the-effects-of-human-junk-food\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T18:20:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:20:22","slug":"gibraltar-monkeys-eat-earth-to-counteract-the-effects-of-human-junk-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/uncategorized\/gibraltar-monkeys-eat-earth-to-counteract-the-effects-of-human-junk-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Gibraltar monkeys eat earth to counteract the effects of human junk food"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Science Writing.-<\/strong> The monkeys of Gibraltar, the only population of macaques living in the wild in Europe<\/a>, have begun to eat soil, and researchers have suggested that they are doing so to counteract the excessive consumption of human food – especially sweet and salty snacks – provided by tourists.<\/p>\n\n\nScientists believe that the chocolate, chips, cookies or ice cream that tourists provide to monkeys or that they steal from them, and which come to represent a substantial part of the diet of many of them, are altering the composition of their intestinal microbiome, and the ingestion of earth would help them rebalance their stomach and obtain the bacteria and minerals absent in junk food.\n\nResearch centers from various countries have participated in the work, coordinated by the University of Cambridge, and researchers from the University of Gibraltar and the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) have participated in it; today they have published their conclusions in the journal Scientific Reports.\n\n\n

We recommend reading:A troop of monkeys saves a 6-year-old girl from a pedophile<\/a><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

‘Geophagy’ is common among some animal species<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThe ‘geophagy’ – the intentional ingestion of earth – is common among some animal species and also in some human cultures, and in this case it is usually associated with the need to ingest nutrients during pregnancy, but the researchers did not observe this intake of the macaques during pregnancy or lactation, which suggests that it is not due to the need for supplementation.\n\nThey have, however, found that animals that have more frequent contact with tourists eat much more earth, and that intake rates are higher during the peak holiday season.\n\nBiological anthropologist Sylvain Lemoine from the Cambridge Archaeology Department, who has led the study, has pointed out that the food brought by tourists and consumed by the Gibraltar macaques is extremely rich in calories, sugar, salt, and dairy, which is completely different from the food the species usually consumes, such as herbs, leaves, seeds, and some insects.\n\nNon-human primates become lactose intolerant after weaning, and dairy products cause digestive problems in monkeys, and ice cream is very popular among tourists in Gibraltar and also among its macaques, and some of the cases of geophagy observed occurred precisely after the researchers saw the monkeys consume bread or ice cream.\n\n\n

The Influence of Tourism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThe Gibraltar macaques number around 230 individuals divided into eight stable groups that inhabit different areas of the Rock and are an important tourist attraction; local authorities provide them with fruit, vegetables and water and although it is forbidden for tourists to feed them, many visitors do so or the monkeys seek and steal their food, and researchers have calculated that almost a fifth of their diet is junk food from humans.\n\nThey have also found that monkeys living in areas most frequented by tourists, such as the top of the rock, are two and a half times more likely to ingest that type of food than animals in less frequented areas, and that the ingestion of soil is abundant in the first group and non-existent in areas where monkeys have no contact with tourists or access to human food.\n\n\n
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<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\nOr that in winter, when the number of tourists decreases and therefore also the intake of junk food by the monkeys, geophagy also decreases.\n\nThe only macaque species with higher geophagy rates than those in Gibraltar are the semi-wild macaques living in Hong Kong’s Kam Shan Country Park, who also have access to a large amount of human food from visitors, and this intake has also been observed among ring-tailed lemurs and chimpanzees in East Africa.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science Writing.- The monkeys of Gibraltar, the only population of macaques living in the wild in Europe, have begun to eat soil, and researchers have suggested that they are doing so to counteract the excessive consumption of human food – especially sweet and salty snacks – provided by tourists. Scientists believe that the chocolate, chips, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-27uB","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","dum_api":{"author_name":"Yerandi Santana","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cropped-WhatsApp-Image-2026-02-13-at-5.35.07-PM-96x96.jpeg","categories_name":["Uncategorized"],"featured_media_url":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}