A vervet monkey hides in a tree.
Sometimes, the best entertainment on safari happens right outside your door. This afternoon, a troop of vervet monkeys turned our lodge into their personal playground, and watching their antics felt exactly like being back in a 7th-grade hallway!
These primates are famous for their high-energy, “semi-arboreal” lifestyle—which is just a fancy way of saying they are equally comfortable wrestling on the ground as they are performing acrobatics in the trees. While they look like they’re just fooling around, this constant play is actually serious business. It’s how young vervets build the physical strength and deep social bonds necessary for life in a tight-knit troop.