Food and feeding

Vervets have a very mixed diet, although their favourite food is fruit. They will also eat flowers and leaves, crops from farmsteads, and even insects, eggs and small rodents. They collect food using their hands, and the young are taught what foods to pick and how to prepare them for eating by their mothers. Vervets also make regular evening trips to a water-hole to drink. The monkeys are also accidental gardeners. They eat seeds whole, and they pass undigested through them and into their droppings, which are left in ideal places for germination, increasing the abundance of trees.