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JapanPlaces & destinations
The Jigokudani macaques
The only monkeys in the world that take hot baths, and they learned it by themselves in 1963.
On the mapNagano
A young female ventured into a neighbouring inn’s pool in 1963 to retrieve soybeans; within a few years the behaviour had spread to the whole troop. Jigokudani park opened in 1964 with a pool reserved for the macaques, to keep them out of the human baths. These Japanese macaques are the northernmost non-human primates on the planet, living through temperatures below minus twenty. The thirty-minute forest walk in still deters coach parties.