One of the most difficult aspects of studying consciousness scientifically, particularly in other-than-humans, is to develop functional definitions for the phenomenon in non-verbal beings, wherein consciousness has to manifest itself in behavioural actions that can be unambiguously ascribed to being products of conscious states of the mind. In this paper, I offer glimpses into the phenomenologically complex minds of wild individual bonnet macaques Macaca radiata – a cercopithecine nonhuman primate endemic to peninsular India – examined through deep naturalistic observations of their cognitive decision-making processes. Such explorations, I believe, are critically important, in not only revealing the innovative responses of these cognitive beings to the pathological complexity presented by the socioecological realities of the everyday but also in uncovering the mechanisms by which these individuals may be able to ‘consciously’ synthesise their various subjective experiences to take novel decisions at different stages of their challenging life histories in the long term.
