Ernest and the Barbary Macaques of Gibraltar

For the last fifty years, Ernest has cared for this tribe of tail-less rock apes.

The apes are not exactly apes. They are monkeys—tail-less macaques, origin Morocco. Nobody knows exactly how they arrived on the peninsula, although theories abound. Many say they were brought here by Arab or Berber pirates in the fourteenth century. Others insist they are the last of the macaques that once ranged across Europe, pushed to its southern edge by the Ice Age. Genetic studies have since traced their ancestors to Morocco and Algeria.

Some have more unusual explanations. In 1920, a journalist for the London Daily Mail wrote, "Well-known monkeys are absent for months, and then reappear with new, strange, adult monkeys of a similar breed. Those who know Gibraltar will agree that there is not a square yard on the Rock where they could have hidden." The author insisted that the only explanation was a submarine tunnel underneath the Mediterranean, connecting the African dens to Gibraltar.

As Gibraltar is simply a large rock (two square miles of Jurassic limestone), a British colony on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, everybody, the monkeys included, is in close proximity. Squished together, hugging the steep cliffsides.

The monkeys have hands remarkably like humans, but their behavior is much more monkeylike. "You think their hands would be rough like dog paws," Jane says. "But it's like holding a human hand. They are like baby hands."

Ernest invites us to his shaded hut. His accent is more international than the other Gibraltarians we meet. Their English is perhaps the strangest on Earth, sounding sinister, Cockney and Spanish, Arabic and cartoonish all at once. When a bartender at one of the dozens of fish and chips parlours says, 'You want two lagers?', it comes out like this: "Yeh whan twah walagas?"

Why Are Monkeys in Gibraltar?

Ernest gives his own explanation for the origin of the monkeys, "They were brought over here in the year 1311 by Arabs. This was an outpost for them at the time. In 1704, when the British first came to Gibraltar, there were only 11 or 12 monkeys on the peninsula. The British Consul wanted to increase their number. Slowly they were cared for and reared by the military "

“So you’ve seen a lot of change?” Jane asks Ernest.

“Yes, you could say this. When the Germans were expected to come into Gibraltar and bomb, I was eight years old, and the women and children were evacuated.”

“So did the Germans ever actually bomb Gibraltar?” I ask. The notion seems absurd, but then the whole point of this rock is its role as a British garrison; a naval foothold in the Mediterranean.
“Oh yes. The Germans and Italians.”
“Where did you go?” Jane asks.
“11,000 of us were evacuated to Britain, and 4,000 to Jamaica. I spent four years in Jamaica."
"And how did you start taking care of the monkeys?" I ask.

"I was a private in the army," Ernest says. "In Gibraltar, you do your duty starting at age eighteen. I would come up here and help name the monkeys and look after them...Now I have been with the monkeys since nineteen-fifty-four."

The Government and the Gibraltar Monkeys

"So the Government of Gibraltar officially takes care of them?" Jane asks.

“Oh yes. They are given immunizations and each are named and catalogued. We also feed them and give them medical examinations. In the old days, the army doctors brought them in for treatment, and examined them one by one."

Caring for the monkeys is not all tourism and show. It is perhaps vital for the people of Gibraltar. Spain, which itself refuses to give up Ceuta and Melilla, its two enclaves on the Moroccan coast, insists that Gibraltar is rightfully Spanish. I ask, "What do you think will happen to Gibraltar in the long run?”

"In two weeks, our foreign ministers are meeting. The foreign minister of Britain is going to Spain and they are expected to make some progress on the subject of our sovereignty. The thing is that we want to be at peace with the Spanish. If the British ever leave, we don't want to go to Spain. We want to be our own people. We will not be ruled by Spain! We are our own nationality. Everybody on Gibraltar believes in our autonomy. We like the British but if they leave we want to be a sovereign state."

"Isn't it true," I say, "that nobody has ever found an ape skeleton on the peninsula?"

Ernest folds his arms and grasps his chin. "Yes, this is true," he says. "Maybe when they go down the cliffs at night they climb into a big hole, and when they think they are going to die, they just stay there. It is believed that the apes created a giant underground burial site, maybe there is a cave. In the nineteen-fifties, there was a very special monkey to the British soldiers. He was called Jocko, and he was very large. When he died they wanted to find his body for a proper burial, and so they looked all over the cliffs but they never found him."

"But how hard can it be to find a hole in the ground, you would think somebody would try to find it." I say.

"Believe it, people are looking for the burial site all the time," he says. Although Gibraltar is tiny, most of it is dense scrub-trees on bare, steep rock. Human exploration of much of the rock is impossible, even by an experienced climbing team.

"Okay," I ask, "what would happen if all the apes of Gibraltar perish?"

When the Monkeys Perish

"Yes," Ernest says. "This is the myth that we have here in Gibraltar. They say that if the apes no longer exist, then the control of the Rock will go from Britain to Spain. But I think this will not happen. The apes will thrive."

This myth has existed since the Spanish began making a series of military bungles against the British on the Rock in an attempt to seize what they could never keep even from the Moors. The Spanish finally resorted to the statement that when the monkeys perish, the British will lose Gibraltar.

When the ape population dwindled to about seven in 1942, Winston Churchill ordered a replenishment from Morocco. He was not about to let the legend come true on his watch.

Ernest pauses to fumble with his pack of Dunhill Filters. His perch is a small painted shack. Like all the rest of Gibraltar's human community below us, it is compact and built tightly against the cliff. His view is the best in all of Gibraltar - a view of a great harbor, a city and the Iberian mainland beyond. It is glorious and vaguely tropical. To his back is Africa, to his front the nation that wants him speaking Spanish.

"The fact is, there are now up to five tribes in Gibraltar. The monkey populations are growing and the people are committed to their survival. Five tribes, that's three hundred apes."

"So there is a lot of weight on your shoulders to keep them alive?"

"Yes, yes." He carries no modesty or pride with this statement. It is simply a fact. He must care for the monkeys lest Gibraltar go the way of Hong Kong.

It's a big responsibility. Gibraltar was essential to Britain's defense against Napoleon; some say that without it, the British Isles would now be French. It mattered even in the Falklands War. In 1982, Argentine commandos slipped into Spain with Italian limpet mines, planning to swim across the bay at night and sink a British warship in the harbor. Spanish police, suspicious of men paying cash for everything, arrested them before they could strike.

Gibraltar was known in Roman times, along with a mountain on the African coast—called back then the Mountain of Apes—as the physical end of the world. Beyond these Straits of Gibraltar swam the dragons and demons of the Atlantic.

A tourist is feeding one monkey a ham and cheese sandwich. The apes do not do well with the food that humans offer them. The signs are everywhere. Do Not Feed the Apes. The reasons are apparent. Human junk food makes the monkeys sick, and it teaches them to raid bags and pockets. Feeding them is now illegal, with fines of up to £4,000.

The monkeys are notorious thieves, and one medium-sized male snatches the plastic-bagged sandwich from her, startling her into a scream. The monkey drops the sandwich and the lady snatches it back, poking it at the monkey's face until he grabs it again.

This act happens every single day on Gibraltar.

There is only one answer: keep that sandwich to yourself. It came out of a plastic bag. The ham is not the kind of cured delicacy that abounds in Spain and Portugal; it comes from a factory paste. The cheese is a white block oozing oil in the sun. It is the kind of sandwich you get from a vending machine, the kind that makes a thud when it drops.

Later I say to Jane, "That has to be the best job in the world. Get to sit in the sun, meet people from all over the world, and play with monkeys all day."

"Great for him, maybe," Jane says, almost as if I were suggesting we give up our careers and join Ernest.

Where are the Barbary Macaques in Gibraltar?

Over the years, I've received inquiries about the Gibraltar macaques, so I've collected some of the common questions about them here. One of the most frequently asked is, where are the monkeys? There are five troops, about 300 monkeys in all, living in different parts of the Upper Rock. The best place to start is the Apes' Den at Queen's Gate. Here is a detailed view of the location:

Do the Monkeys of Gibraltar have Paws or Hands?

A lot of questions about monkeys and apes can be answered intuitively, once we remember that we are very closely related to them. Monkeys, apes and all other primates have five fingers, including an opposable thumb, just like us! When you see the hand of a macaque on the Rock of Gibraltar, you'll be surprised just how much it looks like your own.

Paws are the clawed feet of quadruped mammals like cats, dogs, horses and bears, very different from the hands of primates, which are designed to precisely grasp and control objects.