Backstory: Monkey see, monkey dial

But there is, of course, one big difference between this corner of north-central London and Bolivia: the presence of people. What's more, the people carry around strange black and silver ringing objects. And, as we know, these objects tend to double as cameras these days, which means that many visitors were leaning down to photograph or film the monkeys, holding their cells up close to their faces.

"The monkeys must have thought it was a case of the 'phone's for you,' " says Ms. Cook.

To be sure, the squirrel monkeys seem comfortable living in an open enclosure with people milling around. They're bold and not easily spooked. Even the garish balloons and toy Komodo dragons kids carry around don't seem to unnerve them. Cellphones, however, are another matter. Whether it's curiosity or the possibility of free nighttime minutes, the monkeys would transform into furry thieves, leading to impromptu tugs of war between man and beast. With their tiny hands, the monkeys mainly lost. But those that did manage to make off with a cell tended to discard it shortly afterward.

"We want this to be a natural habitat for them," says Cook. "And there was something unnatural about their interest in cellphones."

As a result, animal behaviorists went to work to curb the illicit impulse. Their solution ... mustard.

"...I'm getting strange looks l8tely. U'd think they had never seen a monkey msging b4. MayB they don't want us getting homesick. And there seems 2 B sumthing wrong with this phone...."

Over three weeks, zoo staffers dressed up in what Cook refers to as "civilian clothing" - jeans, sneakers, and T-shirts - rather than their easy-to-recognize brown uniforms. They walked through the squirrel monkey enclosure with the rest of the visitors, armed with broken cellphones. They offered them to the curious monkeys, who, of course, accepted. Bad move. These were cellphones with a difference.

"We put sticky substances on the phones that squirrel monkeys don't like," says Malcolm Fitzpatrick, the curator of mammals at the Zoological Society of London who devised the gooey cellphone plot. "We wanted to teach them not to touch the phones, and we know they don't like anything sticky."

The substance turned out to be mustard because, as Cook says, "They hate mustard."

The idea wasn't to punish the animals, but to reduce the impact of humans on their natural behavior by training them to ignore cells. "It's back to business as usual now," says Cook, although she thinks the exercise may have to be repeated in a few months - squirrel monkeys don't have long memories. "But for the time being they are doing what squirrel monkeys always do - sleeping, leaping, and foraging for insects. Even the loudest ring tone doesn't really interest them anymore."

"...These cells R overrated. Who wants a device that buzzes and bleeps and is covered in yukky stuff?? The uprite lot can keep 'em."

Back in the enclosure, Aoife and Steven watch a couple of squirrel monkeys dart across a rope from one tree to another, more impressively than the most talented tightrope walker. A woman leans down to film a foraging monkey with her cellphone.

He stares at it for a bit, seems to grimace, and then carries on digging the dirt. This is one primate that has apparently decided cellphones are more of a hassle than they're worth, with or without a weekend calling plan.

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