In order to study the many facets of pri­mate behav­iour, sci­en­tists have pop­u­lated a small island near Puerto Rico with a thou­sand rhe­sus mon­keys. Access to the island—dubbed ‘Mon­key Island’—is granted only for research pur­poses, cre­at­ing a vast and unusual out­door lab.

As the researcher inter­viewed for the National Geo­graphic video on the island says, because the mon­keys are wild and are free to pop­u­late the island, “the con­cept here is dif­fer­ent: we are in cages, and the mon­keys are free.”

via Seed Mag­a­zine (that rightly states, “A thou­sand mon­keys iso­lated on an island and nobody thinks to give them a typewriter?”)