March 22, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 17

DNA studies of the Barbary apes, whose population Churchill augmented during World War II to assure British control of Gibraltar (FH 125:6) have revealed where Churchill got his monkeys. “The Gibraltar colony of Barbary macaques provides an ideal example of genetic isolation of a small population, which is now a regular occurrence among wild primate populations because of forest fragmentation,” said Robert Martin, a primatologist and Field Museum provost. “To our surprise, we found a relatively high level of genetic variability in the Gibraltar macaques. This is now explained by our conclusion that the population was founded with individuals from two genetically distinct populations in Algeria and Morocco.”

That still leaves a mystery of where the original apes came from. Some scientists think they were brought by the Moors, who occupied Spain between 711 and 1492. Others believe they were a remnant of macaques that lived throughout southern Europe 5.5 million years ago and possibly, some speculate, as recently as the 1800s in Spain.
—ROBERT ROY BRITT, MSNBC.MSN.COM, APRIL 25TH