Langur family

   The blistering heat of noon in southern India is only partly screened out by the forest canopy, and even in their shady perch the common langurs are content to laze. Snuggling among them are one or two babies, the first of the season, born in January and now a month old. They are being held and groomed by 'aunts' while their mothers look placidly on. Langur mothers, who produce a baby every other year, frequently let others 'borrow' their infants. Adolescent females are particularly common aunts, but adult females also borrow, and may even suckle, another mother's infant.

   Sharing the tending of the babies allows young females to practise mothering and frees the mother from constant care. Its aim may also be to bond the females more closely. Females that have cared for youngsters will fight for them, and fighting may occasionally be necessary. When a male outsider ousts the group's
sole breeding male perhaps once every few years, the new group leader usually tries to kill the small infants because, with their young wiped out, the females are soon ready to breed again. Then the new leader can father his own young. Mothers and aunts, who make up most of the group of 18 or so, will fiercely resist the killing, sometimes successfully, although the male's larger size makes it difficult.
   Apart from such battles, langurs live in peace, whooping to one another as they swoop gracefully through the trees to feed on fruits, flowers, shoots and leaves. In the heat of the day they rest and groom, and at night they sleep on branches that will not bear the weight of their chief enemies, tigers and leopards.
   In Hindu legend the monkey-god Hanuman, with a troop of common langurs, helped the god Rama to rescue his wife from a demon. Because of this the langurs are often called Hanuman monkeys, and are treated as sacred. People who offer them food earn merit for their next life. The long-legged monkeys, knee-high to a man, roam freely in villages and fields.