Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India

Nonhuman individuals and groups, living in anthropogenic landscapes, often adopt adaptive foraging strategies, mediated by their day-to-day interactions with humans and their artefacts. In this study, employing field experiments, we investigated an example of human-induced, extractive foraging behavior – the extraction of liquid contents from plastic bottles – in a synurbic bonnet macaque Macaca radiata population. The main aims of the study were to examine the distribution, diversity, inter-individual variability and intra-individual flexibility of bottle-directed manipulative behaviors, and to explore the social and environmental factors driving this behavioral practice.