Japanese macaques living in cold mountain environments have developed remarkable cultural adaptations to thermal stress, but face welfare challenges from habitat encroachment and artificial feeding at tourist sites.
Japanese macaque welfare varies dramatically between tourist-site habituated populations and non-habituated forest groups. Tourist-site macaques receive supplementary food that inflates group size beyond natural carrying capacity, intensifying social competition and stress. Non-habituated populations must navigate increasingly fragmented forest habitat and conflict with agricultural communities. The cultural sophistication of macaques — hot spring bathing being the most famous example of socially transmitted behavior — underscores the welfare significance of social and environmental conditions that allow natural behavioral expression. Reducing artificial feeding at tourist sites and managing agricultural conflict through non-lethal deterrence improves welfare for both habituated and wild populations.