From MinuteEarth.
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Monkey Island is, perhaps unsurprisingly, home to thousands of monkeys. And when a major hurricane blew directly across the island, the researchers who study those monkeys thought that they were going to return to a scene of mass tragedy. But only two monkeys died during the storm. It wasn’t until long after the skies cleared that the bodies started piling up.
CPRC is supported by the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through Grant Number P40 OD012217.
LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
– Excess mortality: deaths that occur above and beyond what would have been expected in the absence of the disaster, extending beyond the immediate impact of the event itself.
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CREDITS
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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Arcadi Garcia i Rius | Storyboard Artist & Video Editor
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Henry Reich • Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida
OTHER CREDITS
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Filming access courtesy of the Caribbean Primate Research Center and University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences
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REFERENCES
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Young, R., Hsiang, S. Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States. Nature 635, 121–128 (2024). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07945-5
Hayakawa M. Increase in disaster-related deaths: risks and social impacts of evacuation. Annals of the ICRP. 2016;45(2_suppl):123-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146645316666707
Fujimoto, M., & Nishiura, H. (2021). Predicting the cumulative number of disaster deaths during the early stage of earthquakes. Annals of translational medicine, 9(3), 241. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm-20-5784
Chu, L., Warren, J. L., Spatz, E. S., Lowe, S., Lu, Y., Ma, X., Ross, J. S., Krumholz, H. M., & Chen, K. (2025). Floods and cause-specific mortality in the United States applying a triply robust approach. Nature communications, 16(1), 2853. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58236-0
Kishore N, Marqués D, Mahmud A, Kiang MV, Rodriguez I, Fuller A, Ebner P, Sorensen C, Racy F, Lemery J, Maas L, Leaning J, Irizarry RA, Balsari S, Buckee CO. Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. N Engl J Med. 2018 Jul 12;379(2):162-170. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972 Epub 2018 May 29. PMID: 29809109.
Motes-Rodrigo, A., Albery, G. F., Negron-Del Valle, J. E., Philips, D., Cayo Biobank Research Unit, Platt, M. L., Brent, L. J. N., & Testard, C. (2025). A Natural Disaster Exacerbates and Redistributes Disease Risk Among Free-Ranging Macaques by Altering Social Structure. Ecology letters, 28(1), e70000. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70000
Testard, Camille et al. (2021). Rhesus macaques build new social connections after a natural disaster. Current Biology, Volume 31, Issue 11, 2299 – 2309.e7. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00368-7?
