Many years ago, hunters brought out a saying from the mountains that "it is better to meet a jackal than to touch a mandrill (xiāo)", telling people that there is a beast in the mountains that is more dangerous than jackals, tigers and leopards.
Later, people gradually pieced together the appearance of the mandrill from ancient books and legends: strong in size and infinitely powerful; He has a grimace-like face that looks like a human being, and has black hair all over his body; Run faster than a leopard, can tear a jackal by hand, it is simply a terrible monster.
But once hunters could not imagine that there really is such an animal now, which can be almost exactly the same as the legend.
Chinese legends as far away as Africa
Mandrill, a monkey native to the rainforests of the African continent, got the name that originally belonged to the monster because many characteristics are very similar to the "mandrill" of the mainland legend.
Male mandrill
The male mandrill is strong, can grow to nearly a meter in length, and weighs an average of about 25 kilograms, making it the world's largest monkey primate. Adult male mandrills are hot-tempered, fierce and aggressive, with arm strength about 3 times that of ordinary adults, which is in line with the legendary mandrill's "strong body and infinite strength".
The most peculiar thing about mandrills is this brightly colored face, especially male mandrills. Against the background of gray-black bluish hair, the bright red long nose bridge and striped blue cheeks are very eye-catching. When the male mandrill is emotional, the color on the face will be more intense, both like demons and ghosts, and like Peking Opera faces.
The higher the status of the male mandrill, the brighter the color on the face. Compared to adult males, female mandrills and cubs have much more ordinary faces.
As for running faster than a leopard and tearing a jackal by hand, this is also confirmed in male mandrills.
In its home home in the African rainforest, the mandrill's natural predator is the leopard. But even apex predators like leopards usually only hunt females and juvenile mandrills.
Adult male mandrills are not only irritable and aggressive, but also have sharp claws and canine teeth up to 5 or 6 centimeters long, running at speeds of up to 40 kilometers per hour, and once they see leopards, they will directly rush up to fight, and their fierceness can be seen.
Like other primates, mandrills are omnivores, and the diet includes fruits and leaves and insects such as beetles and spiders, as well as small animals such as birds, frogs, mice, etc., and whenever given the opportunity, mandrills will also eat larger animals, such as other species of monkey cubs.
In Cameroon, Africa, one of the native areas of mandrill, local natives dare to hunt lions, hyenas and other beasts, but for a long time felt that mandrills were as terrifying as ghosts, and there were even accidents where mandrills took away children.
Now if you think back to the monster "mandrill" described in mainland folklore, you will find that this African monkey is indeed very suitable for the name mandrill.
However, the legendary mandrill is a tyrant in the mountains, can the combat effectiveness of the mandrill in reality be proud?
There are many powerful people and rob homes
Male and female mandrills living in groups
The individual combat power of mandrills can be said to be the top in the monkey family, but the capital that allows them to dominate the rainforest is their number and intelligence.
Basically all primates live in groups, and depending on the species, the number of a population varies from one to another. For example, chimpanzees, a close relative of humans, have a maximum of about twenty in a group.
According to field observations in Africa, there are an average of more than 600 mandrill colonies, and the largest population observed is 1,300 mandrills.
Male mandrills have a strong sense of territory and are extremely hostile to any animal that dares to invade their territory. Biologists have studied that male mandrills have a high secretion of testosterone in their bodies, which also creates their irritable and aggressive personality.
Imagine that under the leadership of the tallest and strongest and most brightly colored leader Male Monkey, hundreds of mandrills swoop in viciously, and any predator in the jungle can only escape.
Mandrills also have a killer skill that is intelligence, after all, they are one of the most intelligent primates and can use simple tools such as stones and sticks. In the picture we just imagined, each grinning mandrill has two or three kilograms of stone or wooden stick in its hand, and it can only be said that it is not for nothing that the mandrill has become a rainforest hegemon.
In addition to fighting all over the rainforest, there are almost no opponents, and the clever mandrill has not forgotten to provoke humans.
After the advancement of science and technology, the indigenous African people, who originally relied on hunting as their main means of survival, slowly learned to cultivate fields and cultivate crops. Mandrills, on the other hand, are accustomed to living and searching for food on the ground, and when they find large areas of flat land full of crops, it is tantamount to discovering a cafeteria.
Also under the command of the chief, the whole group of mandrills will rush out of the rainforest from time to time and run into the farmland to feast, and by the way, spoil a large area of farmland.
The locals who have suffered from it naturally want to fight back, they regard mandrills as agricultural pests, and no matter how clever mandrills are, they are still monkeys, and they cannot hide from human shotguns and traps.
But from another perspective, the threat of mandrills to humans is basically only harmful to crops, but human activities have caused the number of wild mandrills to decline by at least 30% in more than two decades.
With the destruction of rainforests, habitat loss, and hunting of male mandrills, there are now few large populations of hundreds of mandrills in Africa, which are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
On the other hand, thanks to scientific and technological progress, people around the world can now see real mandrills just by walking into the zoo, and this is also the case in our country, so some people on the Internet say that they think the face of mandrills is terrifying.
This is not unreasonable, and the relationship between mandrills and mainland legends goes beyond "it is better to meet a jackal than to touch a mandrill".
The shadow of childhood that northern children cannot avoid
Children who grow up in the north should remember the name "big horse monkey", and in childhood, they were indispensable to be told by their parents that "if you don't obey the big horse monkey, you will take you away", so what does this have to do with mandrills far away in Africa?
The connection is this. "Big horse monkey" has different meanings in different parts of the north, such as wild wolves, monkeys who watch horses for people, monsters anyway, etc., among which there is a very mainstream saying that the prototype of the horse monkey is a mandrill.
Of course, this prototype is talking about the strange novels such as "Liaozhai" and the mandrill in folklore, which comes and goes without a trace in the dark mountain forest, looks terrible, and loves to catch and eat disobedient children, so that many northern children dare not stick their feet out of the bed when they sleep at night.
If you have to say that the prototype of the "horse monkey" is this monkey, it is really unrealistic, because the mandrill has always lived in Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon countries in Africa, and it is reasonable to say that people in the northern part of the continent could not have seen mandrills in ancient times.
But the climate and environment of ancient times are different from modern times, just as elephants lived in the Yellow River Basin in ancient times, and some tropical animals today probably lived in a large range. In recent years, scientists have also found wild mandrill populations in South Asia such as Thailand and Vietnam, and the specific reason is still unknown.
So, do you think this monkey living in Africa will be the legendary "mandrill" of the mainland?