(6 Oct 2017) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4119889

As thousands of troops and government workers struggle to restore normal life to Puerto Rico, a small group of scientists is racing to save more than 1,000 macaque monkeys whose brains may contain clues to mysteries of the human mind.
One of the first places Hurricane Maria hit in the US territory on 20 September was Cayo Santiago, known as Monkey Island, a 40-acre outcropping off the east coast that is one of the world's most important sites for research into how primates think, socialise and evolve.
The storm destroyed virtually everything on the island, stripping it of vegetation, wrecking the monkeys' metal drinking troughs and crushing the piers that University of Puerto Rico workers use to bring in bags of monkey chow — brown pellets of processed food that complete the primates' natural vegetation diet.
Incredibly, as far as the scientists can tell so far, the monkeys survived the direct hit from the hurricane, perhaps by seeking high ground and clustering together at the base of trees.
No bodies have been found and a census is not detecting large numbers of missing macaques.
The island's history as a research centre dates to 1938, when the man known as the father of American primate science brought a population of Indian rhesus macaques to the United States.
Clarence Ray Carpenter wanted a place with the perfect mix of isolation and free range, where the monkeys could be studied living much as they do in nature without the difficulties of tracking them through the wild.
Since then the 400 or so macaques have reproduced and expanded their numbers, becoming the world's most studied free-ranging primate population and something of a living library.
Now the university staff and local employees who keep Monkey Island running are frantically ferrying bags of chow in a tiny skiff, feeding the macaques a survival diet and trying to reassemble the rainwater collectors and drinking troughs that keep the animals alive in the tropical sun.

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