Monkey

White-headed Capuchin

2010-01-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

The White-headed Capuchin also known as the White-faced Capuchin or White-throated Capuchin, is a medium-sized New World monkey of the family Cebidae, subfamily Cebinae. Native to the forests of Central America and the extreme north-western portion of South America, the White-headed Capuchin is important to rainforest ecology for its role in dispersing seeds and pollen.
Among the best known monkeys, the White-headed Capuchin is recognized as the typical companion to the organ grinder. In recent years the species has become popular in North American media. It is a highly intelligent monkey and has been trained to assist paraplegic persons. It is a medium-sized monkey, weighing up to 3.9 kg (8.6 lb). It is mostly black, but with a pink face and white on much of the front part of the body, giving it its common name. It has a distinctive prehensile tail that is often carried coiled up and is used to help support the monkey when it is feeding beneath a branch.
In the wild, the White-headed Capuchin is versatile, living in many different types of forest, and eating many different types of food, including fruit, other plant material, invertebrates, and small vertebrates. It lives in troops that can exceed 20 animals and include both males and females. It is noted for its tool use, including rubbing plants over its fur in an apparent use of herbal medicine, and also using tools as weapons and for getting to food. It is a long-lived monkey, with a maximum recorded age of over 54 years.

Description

Like other monkeys in the genus Cebus, the White-headed Capuchin is named after the order of Capuchin friars – the cowls worn by these friars closely resemble the monkey's head coloration. The White-headed Capuchin has mostly black fur, with white to yellowish fur on the neck, throat, chest, shoulders, and upper arms. The face is pink. A V-shaped area of black fur on the crown of the head is distinctive. It has a prehensile tail that is often held coiled, giving the White-headed Capuchin the nickname "ringtail".
Adults reach a length of between 335 and 453 mm (13.2 and 17.8 in), excluding tail, and a weight of up to 3.9 kg (8.6 lb). The tail is longer than the body, at up to 551 mm (21.7 in) in length. Males are about 27% larger than females. The brain of a White-headed Capuchin is about 79.2 g (2.79 oz), which is larger than that of several larger monkey species, such as the Mantled Howler.

Distribution and habitat

The White-headed Capuchin is found in much of Central America and a small portion of South America. In Central America, its range includes much of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. It has also been reported to occur in eastern Guatemala and southern Belize, but these reports are unconfirmed. In South America the White-headed Capuchin is found in the extreme north-western strip between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains in Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. It is among the most commonly seen monkeys in Central America's national parks, such as Manuel Antonio National Park, Corcovado National Park, Santa Rosa National Park and Soberania National Park.
It is found in many different types of forest, including mature and secondary forests, and including evergreen and deciduous forests, dry and moist forests, and mangrove and montane forests. However, it appears to prefer primary or advanced secondary forests. Also, higher densities of White-headed Capuchins are found in older areas of forest and in areas containing evergreen forest, as well as areas with more water availability during the dry season.

Behavior

The White-headed Capuchin is a diurnal and arboreal animal. However, it does come down to the ground more often than many other New World monkeys. It moves primarily by walking on all four limbs. It lives in troops, or groups, of up to 39 monkeys (mean 16, range 4-39) and have male/female adult sex ratios of .71 on average (range .54-.88) With rare exception, females spend their entire lives with their female kin . Males migrate to new social groups multiple times during the course of their lifetimes, migrating for the first time between 20 months and 11 years of age. The median age of migration in the Santa Rosa population is 4.5 years. Males sometimes migrate alone, but more often they migrate in the company of other males who are often their kin. One of the unusual features of the kinship structure of the White-headed Capuchin, relative to other primate species, is the high degree of relatedness within groups that results from the long tenures of alpha males who sire most of the offspring. Alpha males have been known to keep their positions as long as 17 years in this species and this puts them in the unusual position of being available to sire the offspring of their daughters and granddaughters, who produce their first offspring at about 6-7 years of age. Typically, however, alpha males do not breed with their own daughters, even though they do sire virtually all offspring produced by females unrelated to them .Those subordinate males who are allies of the alpha male in group defense are the males who sire the offspring of the alpha male’s daughters. The high degree to which alpha males monopolize matings results in an unusually large number of paternal half-siblings and full siblings in this species relative to other primate species
Kinship is an important organizing factor in the structuring of female-female social relationships. Particularly in larger groups, females preferentially associate with, groom, and provide coalitionary support to their matrilineally related female kin. They do not exhibit a similar preference for their paternal half sisters, which may mean that they only are capable of recognizing kinship through the maternal line . Dominance rank is also an important organizing factor, with females more often grooming and associating with females who are closer to them in the dominance hierarchy. Female-female dyads groom far more than male-female and male-male dyads. Coalitionary aggression is common both among males and females, and capuchins seem to have an excellent understanding of the alliance structure in their group. For example, when capuchins are fighting, they sensibly recruit aid from someone who is both higher ranking than they are and also better friends with themselves than with their opponent.
Female capuchins have linear dominance hierarchies. In contrast to many Old World monkeys such as macaques, in which females socially inherit the rank just below their mothers and just above their next oldest sisters, capuchins do not have a highly predictable ranking within their matrilines. Males are typically dominant to females. The alpha male is always easy to discern, but there are sometimes ambiguous rankings among subordinate males. Male-male relationships are tense, and affiliation between males is typically expressed by resting in contact, playing, or non-conceptive sex rather than by grooming. Males cooperate in coalitions against potential predators, and also in defense of the group against other males. Occasionally male coalitionary aggression becomes so violent that males are killed, particularly if they are encountered roaming the forest unaccompanied by allies.Because aggression from other male capuchins is the leading cause of death (aside from poaching by humans, where there is contact between humans and capuchins), male allies are critical for self-defense during migration, and to assist in taking over other groups . Male emigration to a new troop typically occurs about every 4 years, so most males are in constant danger of having to defend themselves against other groups of males. It is often the case that immigrating males kill young infants when they take over a group Females band together to defend their infants from infanticidal males, but they rarely succeed in saving their infants Because infants inhibit their mothers from ovulating by nursing frequently, males are able to bring females into estrus earlier by killing the infants and thereby terminating nursing; this has the effect of increasing their breeding opportunities. Females do often mate with the killers of their infants, and with time, they typically become as supportive of the new alpha male as they had been of the previous one. The alpha male helps defend females from subordinate males within the group as well as from infanticidal males from other groups.

Interactions between groups

White-faced capuchin troops occupy home ranges of between 32 and 86 hectares (79 and 210 acres). They travel between 1 and 3 kilometres (0.62 and 1.9 mi) daily, averaging 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) per day. Although they engage in activity that has been described as "territorial", more recent research indicates that white-faced capuchin troops tend to behave aggressively to other white-faced capuchin troops regardless of where they meet, and the aggression is not necessarily intended to exclude the other troops from a specific home range.
Home ranges overlap extensively, so groups are not territorial in the strictest sense of the word. Perhaps because of the intensity of male-male competition and the threat of infanticide, interactions between groups are typically hostile: the males display aggressively toward one another and sometimes engage in physical aggression (even killing an opponent), while females grab their infants and run. Typically, males are the primary participants in aggressive intergroup encounters, and it seems likely that males are defending access to the females in their groups. Alpha males, who have the largest reproductive stake in the group, participate at a higher rate than subordinate males. Groups with more males have an advantage over groups with fewer males, but the location of the encounter within the home range matters as well; smaller groups defeat larger groups when the contest occurs in the core or center area of the smaller group’s home range.

Diet

The White-headed Capuchin is an omnivore. Its primary foods are fruit and insects. It forages at all levels of the forest, and also forages on the ground. Methods for finding food include stripping bark off of trees, searching through leaf litter, breaking dead tree branches, rolling over rocks, and using stones as anvils to crack hard fruits. Its prehensile tail assists with feeding, helping support the monkey when foraging for food below the branches.
Fruit can make up between 50% and 67% or more of the capuchin's diet. In one study in Panama, White-headed Capuchins ate 95 different fruit species. Among its favorite fruits are figs from the family Moraceae, mangos and related fruits from the family Anacardiaceae, the bean-like fruits from the family Leguminosae and fruits from the family Rubiaceae. It generally only eats ripe fruit, testing for ripeness by smelling, tasting and prodding the fruit. It typically eats only the pulp and juice, spitting out the seeds and fibers. Other plant matter eaten includes flowers, young leaves, seeds of certain plants, and bromeliads. It also uses the bromelids as a water source, drinking the water that gets trapped inside.
Insect prey eaten includes beetle larvae, butterfly and moth caterpillars, ants, wasps, and ant and wasp larvae. It also eats larger prey, such as birds, bird eggs, frogs, lizards, crabs, mollusks and small mammals. The population in Guanacaste, Costa Rica in particular is noted for hunting squirrels, magpies, White-crowned Parrots and baby coatis. The amount of vertebrate prey eaten varies by troop. Even neighboring troops can show significant differences in their diets.
The diet can vary between the rainy and dry season. For example, in Guanacaste, Costa Rica the White-headed Capuchin can eat a wide variety of fruits as well as caterpillars in the early rainy season (June to November). But during the dry season, only figs and a few other types of fruit are available. During the dry season, chitinous insects, ant and wasp larvae and vertebrates become a particularly important part of the White-headed Capuchin's diet. Access to water can also become an issue during the dry season. The White-headed Capuchin likes to drink daily, so in forests where water holes dry up during the dry season, there can be competition between troops over access to the remaining water holes.

Reproduction

The White-headed Capuchin uses a polygamous mating system in which a male may mate with multiple females. Although the dominant male does not monopolize breeding, studies have shown that the dominant male does tend to father most of the young. Although a female may mate with several males, the dominant male may be more likely to copulate when the female is at peak fertility. Nonetheless, there is evidence that dominant males do tend to avoid breeding with their own daughters who are members of the troop. Such avoidance is rare among New World primates.

Copulation takes about 2 minutes, and the gestation period is 5 to 6 months. Usually a single young is born, but twins occur occasionally. Most births occur during the dry season from December to April. The infant is carried across its mother's back for about 6 weeks. After about 4 to 5 weeks it can stray from its mother for brief periods and by about 3 months it can move around independently, although some infants will be mostly independent earlier. Weaning occurs between 6 and 12 months. While the mother rests, the young spends most of its time foraging or playing, either on its own or with other juveniles. Capuchins engage in high levels of alloparenting, in which monkeys other than the mother help care for the infant. Infants are carried by alloparents most often between 4 and 6 weeks in age. Males as well as females engage in alloparenting.
Like other capuchin species, the White-headed Capuchin matures slowly. Sexual maturity can be reached at 3 years. But on average, females give birth for the first time at 7 years old and give birth every 26 months thereafter. Males attain reproductive maturity at 10 years old. The White-headed Capuchin has a long life span given its size. The maximum recorded life span in captivity is over 54 years.

Conservation status

The White-headed Capuchin is regarded as "least concern" from a conservation standpoint by IUCN. However, its numbers are impacted by the fact that it is sometimes captured for the pet trade. Its status can also be harmed by deforestation. However, deforestation may also impact its main predator, the Harpy Eagle, more than it directly impacts the White-headed Capuchin, and so on a net basis deforestation may not be as harmful to the capuchin's status. The White-headed Capuchin can adapt to forest fragmentation better than other species due to its ability to live in a wide variety of forest types and exploit a wide variety of food sources. The White-headed Capuchin is important to its ecosystems as a seed and pollen disperser. It also impacts the ecosystem by eating insects that act as pests to certain trees, by pruning certain trees, such as Gustavia superba and Bursera simaruba, causing them generate more branches and possibly additional fruit, and by accelerating germination of certain seeds when they pass through the capuchin's digestive tract. In addition, the White-headed Capuchin sometimes kills Acacia collinsii plants when it rips through the plant's branches to get to resident ant colonies.

Tufted Capuchin

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The Tufted Capuchin, also known as Brown Capuchin or Black-capped Capuchin is a New World primate from South America. As traditionally defined, it is one of the most widespread primates in the Neotropics, but it has recently been recommended considering the Black-striped, Black and Golden-bellied Capuchins as separate species, thereby effectively limiting the Tufted Capuchin to the Amazon Basin and nearby regions.

The Tufted Capuchin is an omnivorous animal, mostly feeding on fruits and invertebrates, although it sometimes feeds on small vertebrates (e.g. lizards and bird chicks) and other plant parts. It can be found in many different kinds of environment, including moist tropical and subtropical forest, dry forest, and disturbed or secondary forest.

Like other capuchins, it is a social animal, forming groups of 8 to 15 individuals that are led by an alpha or dominant male.

Physical characteristics

The Tufted Capuchin is more powerfully built than the other capuchins, with rougher fur and a short, thick tail. It has a bundle of long, hardened hair on the forehead that can be raised as a sort of "wig". The fur is brownish gray, with the belly being somewhat lighter-colored than the rest of the body. The hands and feet are black. The tail is strong and can be used as a grasping tail.

The Tufted Capuchin has a head-body length of 32 to 57 cm, a tail length of 38 to 56 cm, and a weight of 1.9 to 4.8 kg, with the males generally being larger and heavier than the females.

Distribution and habitat

This species lives in the northern Amazon rainforest of the Guyanas and Brazil to the west of the Rio Negro, as far north as the Orinoco in Venezuela. It can be found in a large variety of forest types, mainly in tropical rainforests (up till a height of 2700 m), but also in more open forests.

The distribution overlaps with that of other species of capuchins, such as the White-fronted Capuchin.

The Tufted Capuchin is a diurnal, arboreal primate species, but it often forages on the ground to search for food or to walk longer distances between trees that are too far apart to jump. During the night, the capuchin rests in a hollow tree or between dense branches.

The Tufted Capuchin lives a solitary life, or in groups of two to twenty animals. A single group usually contains only one adult male, but mixed groups with multiple males do also occur. In that case, one of the males is dominant. He accepts only a few monkeys in his direct surroundings, mainly younger animals and a few females. The dominant male and the group members that are close to him have the privilege to eat first in case of food scarcity, while subordinate monkeys have to wait until they are ready.

As opposed to some other capuchins, a group of Tufted Capuchins has no fixed territory. Different groups are often encountered in the same area.

After a gestation period of 180 days, one young is born, or incidentally a twin. This young, which weighs only 200 to 250 grams, is carried on the back of its mother. The mother feeds her child for 9 months, but the young is sexually immature until its seventh year, which is quite late for a primate of its size.

Important natural enemies of the capuchin are large birds of prey. They are so afraid of those birds, that they even become alarmed when a harmless bird flies over.

The Tufted Capuchin rubs urine on its hands and feet in order to attract mates and reduce stress.

Food

A well-known characteristic of this species is that it uses stones as a tool to open hard nuts. First it lays the nut on a large, flat stone, after which it hammers with a smaller stone until the nut is opened. Besides nuts, it also eats fruit, insects, larvae, eggs, young birds, frogs, lizards, and even bats. They are also known to chase cats. The Tufted Capuchin looks for its food in groups. As soon as one of the group members has found something edible, he or she may make a large whistling sound, dependent upon the proximity of other individuals and abundance of the food resource, so that the other monkeys know that there is something to eat. The composition of the group is very well-organized, and is determined by rank in the hierarchy. The dominant male often resides somewhere in the middle of the group just behind the front line, so that it is safer when a predator attacks. The vanguard is composed of higher-ranked females who are tolerated by the dominant male. They have the privilege to reach the food first, but they are also the most vulnerable when a predator attacks.

Golden Bellied Capuchin

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The Golden-bellied Capuchin also known as the Yellow-breasted or Buffy-headed Capuchin, is one of several species of New World monkeys.

Although there are differences between individuals as well as between the sexes and across age groups, C. xanthosternos is described as having a distinctive yellow to golden red chest, belly and upper arms. Its face is a light brown and its cap for which the capuchins were first named is a dark brown/black or light brown. Formerly thought to be a subspecies of Tufted Capuchin (C. apella), it was elevated to the status of species. Despite this previous classification, C. xanthosternos does not have very evident tufts, as they are oriented towards the rear of the skull and are hardly noticeable. A band of short hair around the upper part of the face with speckled colouring contrasts with the darker surrounding areas. The limbs and tail are also darkly coloured.

Populations of C. xanthosternos are restricted to the Atlantic forest of south-eastern Bahia, Brazil, due possibly to high degrees of interference from man. Historically they probably would have inhabited the entire area east of, and north to, the Rio São Francisco.

Only 301 individuals survive, the last one was born on 07/21/2009.

Black Capuchin

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The Black Capuchin, Cebus nigritus, also known as the Black-horned Capuchin, is a capuchin monkey from the Atlantic Forest in south-eastern Brazil and far north-eastern Argentina. It has traditionally been included as a subspecies of the Tufted Capuchin.

Subspecies

The Black Capuchin has three subspecies: Cebus n. nigritus (nominate) and C. n. cucullatus are found in the southern part (the former eastwards, and the latter westwards) of this species' range, and both have a distinctive pair of tufts on the crown, as also suggested by the alternative common name of this species; Black-horned Capuchin. The last subspecies, the Robust Tufted Capuchin (C. n. robustus) is found in the northern part of this species range, and has a median conical crest on the crown.

Status

The Black Capuchin's population number is unknown, but thought to be declining. This is due mostly to habitat loss, hunting, and the pet trade.

Weeper Capuchin

2010-01-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

The Weeper Capuchin is a capuchin monkey from South America. It is found in northern Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, Venezuela and possibly northern Colombia.

White-fronted Capuchin

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The White-fronted Capuchin is a New World primate, endemic to seven different countries in South America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Trinidad. The species is also divided into several different subspecies.

Just like any other capuchin monkey, it is also an omnivorous animal, feeding primarily on fruits, although it can also eat invertebrates and other plant parts. It is a polygamous animal and lives on fairly large groups (15 up to 35 individuals), reproductive females each giving birth to a single young at biennial intervals.

Tibetan Macaque

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The Tibetan Macaque, also known as the Chinese Stump-tailed Macaque or Milne-Edwards' Macaque, is found from eastern Tibet east to Guangdong and north to Shaanxi in China and has recently been reported from north-eastern India. This species lives in subtropical forests (mixed deciduous to evergreen) at altitude that range from 800 to 2500 meters. The Tibetan Macaque has a long dense brown fur with whiskers but a hairless face.

The infants have silver and black fur that changes to its adult color at the age of two. Its diet consists mostly of fruit, but it will also consume seeds, leaves, berries and flowers as well as invertebrates. It is a gregarious animal and lives in multi-male and multi-female groups. The life span of the Tibetan Macaque is over 20 years.

Bonnet Macaque

2010-01-10T10:58:00.001-08:00

The Bonnet Macaque is a macaque endemic to southern India. Its distribution is limited by the Indian Ocean on three sides and the Godavari and Tapti Rivers along with a related competing species of Rhesus Macaque in the north.

This Old World monkey is a diurnal animal. It is 35-60 cm long plus a tail of 35-68 cm. Males weigh 5.5 to 9 kg., females 3.5 to 4.5 kg. It can live more than 30 years.

The Bonnet Macaque feeds on fruits, nuts, seeds, flowers, invertebrates and cereals. In southern India this macaque exists as commensal to humans, feeding on food given by humans and raiding crops and houses.

Two subspecies of Bonnet Macaques have been identified: Macaca radiata radiata and Macaca radiata diluta.

Dominance and Hierarchies

The Bonnet Macaque, like other macaques, share a dominance hierarchy which is linear. It means that there is an 'alpha' male who is the most dominant male of the troop, followed by a 'beta' male and 'gamma' and so on according to their dominance. Similarly for females also there is an 'alpha' female, 'beta' female 'gamma' female etc. The male and female hierarchies are different and of a non overlapping or non mixing type. Usually males are dominant over females, but this is not always so.

The females have a stable dominance hierarchy, which changes very rarely, whilst the dominance hierarchy of males is very dynamic. In the male hierarchy there is always a competition to rise in rank with fights between close ranks common. A male has the best chance of obtaining high rank in his prime age resulting in the greatest benefits to reproduction. High rank individuals have first access to breeding females. Females are receptive during only a few months in a year resulting in competition between males. In this situation the rank which has been established by aggressive encounters come into play. Most of these aggressive encounters are easily resolved however when similarly built or similarly aggressive males compete its results into brutal and sometime fatal fights. Different males may employ various means to rise in rank. Coalition formation between unrelated males to oust a more dominant male has been observed. Males often move from troop to troop to gain higher rank with the resulting benefits. However there have been cases observed when a male remains in a single troop, rising to become dominant male of that troop.

In the case of females the stable dominance hierarchy is a result of female philopatry. Philopatry indicates that individuals tend to remain with the troop that they are born into. This results in the formation of matrilines, groupings of closely related females. These matrilines help each other during antagonistic interactions. As the matrilines are continuously reinforced with new births of females in a troop there is rarely any upturning of ranks. There are a few rare cases of rank reversal for females in which matrilines have become extremely depleted due to few female births. Male infants would not help to reinforce the matrilines as they move off to new troops leaving their natal troops.

Behavior

The Bonnet Macaque has a very wide range of gestures and behavior which can be easily differentiated. 'Lip smacking' is one of the most common and affiliative behavior, where one individual may open and close the mouth in rapid succession with tongue in between teeth and lips pressing against each other giving an audible sound. "Grimace" is the most common gesture of fear or submission in which a subordinate shows to a dominant individual during aggressive encounters. It consists of pulling back of the upper lip showing the upper teeth. They also have distinct alarm calls for predators.

Toque Macaque

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The Toque Macaque is a reddish-brown coloured Old World monkey endemic to Sri Lanka, where it is locally known as the 'Rilewa' or 'Rilawa' (hence 'Rillow' in the Oxford English Dictionary). It is named for the Toque shaped whorl of hair on its head, rather like the bonnet of the related Bonnet Macaque.

It lives in troops, sometimes numbering up to 20, and has developed into three subspecies. It has a head and body length of 35–55 cm (14–22 in), a tail length of 40–60 cm (16–24 in) and can weigh up to 8.4 kg (19 lb).

Troops of the Toque Macaque are a common sight in The Cultural Triangle, where many ancient temples are situated, hence earning them the nickname of "Temple Monkey".

Japanese Macaque

2010-01-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

The Japanese macaque, also known as the snow monkey, is a terrestrial Old World monkey species native to Japan, although an introduced free-ranging population has been living near Laredo, Texas since 1972. It is the most northern-living as well as the most polar-living non-human primate. In Japan, they were historically known as saru ("monkey"). Nihonzaru (Nihon "Japan" + saru) is used in modern times to distinguish from other primates. Individuals have brown-gray fur, a red face, and a short tail.

Range and diet

The Japanese macaque is diurnal and spends most of its time in forests. It lives in a variety of forest-types, including subtropical to subalpine, deciduous, broadleaf, and evergreen forests, below 1500 m. It feeds on seeds, roots, buds, fruit, invertebrates, berries, leaves, eggs, fungi, bark, cereals and in rare cases even fish. It has a body length ranging from 79 to 95 cm, with a tail length of approximately 10 cm. Males weigh from 10 to 14 kg, females, around 5.5 kg.

The Japanese macaque lives in mountainous areas of Honshū, Japan. It survives winter temperatures below -15 °C (5°F), and is perhaps most notable for the amount of time it spends in naturally heated volcanic hot springs in Snow Monkey park located in Yamanouchi town, close to a historical hot spring area named Shibu Onsen. In Life on Earth from 1979, David Attenborough notes that the monkeys (not the entire population) first moved into the volcanic area with the springs, "Only a few years ago."

Social organization and reproduction

The Japanese macaque lives in troops 20-100 individuals in size usually subdivided into matrilineal groups consisting of many females and several males. On average, females outnumber males by 3 to 1. The females have a rigid hierarchy with infants inheriting their mother's rank. The males tend to be transient within the troop but in Jigokudani park a line of alpha males, "chiefs", has been documented.

Females will copulate with an average of ten males during the mating season, though only about one third of the mountings will lead to ejaculation. Though pregnancies only occur during the mating season, heterosexual and homosexual relations go on year-round.

The Japanese macaques at Jigokudani hotspring in Nagano have become notable for their winter visits to the spa.

After a gestation period of 173 days, females bear only one baby, which weighs about 500 g at birth. This macaque has an average lifespan of 30 years.

Behavior

The Japanese macaque is a very intelligent species. It is the only animal other than humans and raccoons that is known to wash its food before eating it. Researchers studying this species left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to feed on, then witnessed one female, named Imo (Japanese for yam or potato), taking the food down to the sea to wash the sand off it. After a while, others started to copy her behavior. This trait was then passed on from generation to generation, until eventually, all except the very oldest members of the troop were washing their food and even seasoning their clean food in the sea. She was similarly the first observed balling up wheat with air pockets, throwing it into the water, and waiting for it to float back up before picking it up and eating it free from dirt. An entirely altered misaccount of this incident is the basis for the fictitious "Hundredth Monkey" meme.

The macaque has other unusual behaviors, including bathing together in hot springs and rolling snowballs for fun. Also in recent studies, it has been found that the Japanese Macaque can develop different accents, like humans. It was found that macaques in areas separated by only a couple hundred miles can have very different pitches in their calls, their form of communication. The Japanese Macaque has been involved in many studies concerning neuroscience and also is used in drug testing.

Formosan Rock Macaque

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The Formosan Rock Macaque is a macaque endemic to the island of Taiwan and has been introduced to Japan. Besides humans, Formosan Rock Macaques are the only native primates living in Taiwan.

Physical Characteristics

Rock macaques measure 50-60 cm and weigh 5-12 kg, generally females are smaller. Their tails are moderately long and measure 26-45 cm. This macaque is brown or gray in color. The monkey has specialized pouch-like cheeks, allowing it to temporarily hoard its food. The gathered morsels are eaten sometime later, in safe surroundings.

Life and Behavior

Among the 22 species of the genus Macaca that are found in southern and eastern Asia as well as northwestern Africa, the Formosan macaque is endemic to the island of Taiwan (area: 36,000 km²).

Formosan Rock Monkey lives in mixed coniferous-hardwood temperate forest, as well as bamboo and grassland at 100-3600m (328-11,812ft). The social structure of macaques is generally characterized as often occurring as a large stable multimale-multifemale troop. Formosan macaque is considered to be female-bonded which is similar to other species in the genus Macaca. Based on the study of Hsu and Lin, the average overall sex ratio was approximately 1:1, and the average adult sex ratio was close to 0.53. Solitary adult males were accounted for 5% of the entire population, and they were seen interacting with social troops especially during mating season.

Rock macaques are diurnal, arboreal, and terrestrial. More often they stay in trees and less so on the ground. They rest in forest and forage in grassland. Their diet consists of fruits, tender leaves, buds, grass stems, insects, snails, and bird eggs.

Reproduction

The Formosan rock macaque gives birth to a single offspring. During estrus, the perineum of the female swells at the base of the tail, and there is also swelling along the thighs. Their mating season is from October to January. Gestation may last about five and a half months. Females give birth to babies between spring and summer. Nursing are entirely on females. Youngsters are carried in mother's arms for 2-3 months. Not until one year old, will youngsters be fully separated from their parents carrying.

Protected Species

Formosan rock macaques are hunted for their meat and for the damage they do to crops. They are also hunted for the purpose of exports for medical experimental use.

Rhesus Macaque

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The Rhesus Macaque, often called the Rhesus Monkey, is one of the best known species of Old World monkeys.

Adult males measure approximately 53 centimeters on average and weigh an average of 7.7 kilograms. Females are smaller, averaging 47 centimeters in length and 5.3 kilograms in weight. This macaque is brown or grey in color and have pink faces which are typically bereft of fur. Its tail is of medium length and averages between 20.7 and 22.9 centimeters. It typically has a lifespan of about 25 years.

The species is native to northern India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Afghanistan, southern China, and some neighboring areas.

In nature

Inhabiting arid, open areas, the Rhesus Macaque may be found in grasslands, woodlands, and in mountainous regions up to 2,500 metres in elevation. They are regular swimmers, babies as young as a few days old can swim and adults are known to swim over a half mile between islands, but are often found drowned in small groups where their drinking waters lie. The Rhesus Macaque is noted for its tendency to move from rural to urban areas, coming to rely on handouts or refuse from humans. It has become a pest in some areas, perceived as a possible risk to public health and safety.

A diurnal animal, the Rhesus Macaque is both arboreal and terrestrial; it is mostly herbivorous and feeds on leaves and pine needles, roots, and the occasional insect or small animal. The monkey has specialized pouch-like cheeks, allowing it to temporarily hoard its food. The gathered morsels are eaten sometime later, in safe surroundings.

According to Melnick, Hoelzer, Absher, and Ashley, "The rhesus monkey has the widest geographic ranges of any nonhuman primate," occupying a great diversity of altitudes throughout Central, South, and Southeast Asia.

Feral colonies in the United States

In addition to the Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico colony described above, a colony of rhesus macaques was established in the Silver River State Park in Florida around the spring of 1938. The monkeys were released by a tour boat operator known locally as "Colonel Tooey" to enhance his "Jungle Cruise" ride some time around the Spring of 1938. A traditional story that the monkeys were released for scenery enhancement in the Tarzan movies that were filmed at that location is false, as the only Tarzan movie filmed in the area, 1939's Tarzan Finds a Son! contains no Rhesus Macaques. In addition, various colonies of rhesus and other monkey species are speculated to be the result of zoos and wildlife parks destroyed in hurricanes, most notably Hurricane Andrew.

There is also a notable colony of Rhesus Monkeys on Morgan Island, one of the Sea Islands in the South Carolina Lowcountry. They were imported in the 1970s for use in the local labs and are by all accounts thriving.

Behaviour and Reproduction

Like other macaques, the Rhesus troop comprises a mixture of males and females. The troop may contain up to 180 individuals, but 20 is the average. Females may outnumber the males by a ratio of 4:1. The social hierarchy is also matriarchal, rank dependent on lineage to the lead female. Care of young and territory surveillance duties are shared amongst the troop. While females are more or less placid, males are typically rowdy between themselves. The Rhesus Macaque is characterised as a vociferous monkey. Monkeys that discover food will normally advertise the fact by specific calls, though it has been claimed that young or subordinate monkeys will sometimes seek to avoid doing so if their discovery has gone unobserved. Females cycle similar to humans with menstrual cycles of around 28 days.

Mating is not confined to a specific season. Gestation may last from 135-194 days. Females are mature by three years of age, and males at four. The typical lifespan of a rhesus monkey in captivity is approximately 15–20 years for males and 20–25 years for females. These monkeys rarely live beyond 15 years of age in the wild.

Stump-tailed Macaque

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The Stump-tailed Macaque, also called the Bear Macaque, is a species of macaque found in Southern Asia. It is primarily frugivorous, with its diet mostly consisting of fruits. It eats many types of vegetation such as seeds, leaves and roots, but also hunts freshwater crabs, frogs, bird eggs and insects.

Physical characteristics

The Stump-tailed Macaque has long, thick, dark brown fur covering its body, but its face and its short tail, which measures between 32 and 69mm, are hairless. Infants are born white and darken as they mature. As they age, their bright pink or red faces darken to brown or nearly black and lose a lot of their hair. Males are much larger than females, measuring between 51.7-65cm long and weighing between 9.7-10.2kg, while females measure between 48.5-58.5cm and weigh between 7.5-9.1kg. Male Stump-tailed Macaques' canine teeth, which are important for establishing dominance within social groups, are more elongated than those of the females. Like all macaques, this species has cheek pouches to store food for short periods of time.

Habitat

This Old World monkey travels quadrupedally and usually on the ground for it is not very agile in trees. It is generally found in subtropical and tropical broad leaf evergreen forests, in different elevations depending on the amount of rainfall in the area. It depends on rainforests for food and shelter and is not found in dry forests except where it ranges in the Himalayan region of India, only spending time in secondary forests if it is bordering primary tropical forests. It is distributed from North-Eastern India and Southern China into the North-West tip of West Malaysia on the Malay Peninsula. It is also found in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and far Eastern Bangladesh. A study population was introduced to Tanaxpillo, an uninhabited island in Lake Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico in 1974, where it ranges in semi-natural conditions. Most information on the species comes from the introduced population on Tanaxpillo and other captive settings as there have been very few long-term studies of the Stump-tailed Macaque in the wild.

Crab-eating Macaque

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The Crab-eating Macaque is a primarily arboreal macaque native to Southeast Asia. It is also called the Cynomolgus Monkey, Philippine Monkey and the Long-tailed Macaque.

Physical characteristics

Depending on sub-species, the body length of the adult monkey is 38-55 centimetres (15–22 in) with comparably short arms and legs. The tail is longer than the body, typically 40–65 cm (16–26 in). Males are considerably larger than females, weighing 5-9 kilograms (11-20 lb) compared to the 3–6 kg (7-13 lb) of female individuals.

Macaca fascicularis is a very social animal that lives in groups anywhere from 5-60+ animals. These groups are multi-male groups, normally containing 2-5 males and 2-3 times as many females. The number of immature is usually comparative to the number of females. Their group size often depends on the level of predation and availability of food. Their groups are female-centred, as the females are philopatric (i.e. remain in one place across generations) and the males move in and out of these female-based groups. Males generally first emigrate from their natal group at the age of 4-6. They will remain in a group up to four or five years and thus will emigrate several times throughout their life. These monkeys are highly despotic and have a strict dominance hierarchy. Adult males rank higher than females. Female ranks are more stable than males, as males from time-to-time will be defeated and lose rank. High-ranked males generally are more successful at reproduction and high-ranked females generally fare better at raising surviving offspring. The females are organized into matrilines, which are the female-based families consisting of the resident females and their offspring. Matrilines are ranked and some families have greater social power than others and this difference in rank is maintained over several generations. Matrilineal overthrows rarely occur and when they do they have severe consequences to the reproductive success of the defeated matriline in the following year.

After a gestation period of 167–193 days, the female gives birth to one infant. The infant's weight at birth is approximately 350 grams (12 oz). Infants are born with black fur and this fur will begin to turn to a yellow-green, grey-green, or reddish-brown shade (depending on the sub-species) after about three months of age. It is suggested this natal coat indicates to others the status of the infant and other group members treat infants with care and rush to their defence when distressed. Newly immigrated males will sometimes commit infanticide on infants not their own, and high-ranked females sometimes kidnap the infants of lower-rank females. These kidnappings usually result in the fatality of the infants, as the other female usually is not lactating. Young juveniles stay with the mother and relatives mainly, and as male juveniles get older they become more peripheral to the group. Here they play together forming crucial bonds that may help them when the emigrate from their natal group. Males that emigrate with a partner seems to be more successful than those that move off alone. Young females on the other hand stay in the centre of the group and become incorporated into the matriline they were born into.

Results of a research shows that male Crab-eating Macaques will groom females in order to get sex. The study found that a female has a greater likelihood to engage in sexual activity with a male if he had recently groomed her, compared to males who had not groomed her.

Diet

The crab-eating Macaques's diet is not limited to crabs: They are opportunistic omnivores, meaning they eat a variety of animals, plants, and other materials. Although fruits and seeds make up 60 - 90% of the dietary intake, they also eat leaves, flowers, roots and bark, and also prey on vertebrates (including bird chicks and nesting female birds, lizards, frogs, fish), invertebrates, and bird eggs. Although the species is ecologically well-adapted in its native range and possess no particular threat to the overall populations of prey species, in areas where the Crab-eating Macaque is non-native it can pose a substantial threat to biodiversity.

The Crab-eating Macaque is sometimes known as a "crop-raider", feeding in cultivated fields on such items as young dry rice, cassava leaves, rubber fruit, taro plants, coconuts, mangos, and other crops, thus often causing significant losses to the cash incomes of local farmers. It also takes food from graveyards, garbage cans, and garbage pits. The species is often unafraid of humans, and is found in many cities and villages. It has been involved in aggressive interactions with people.

Distribution and habitat

Being "ecologically diverse", the Crab-eating Macaque is found in a wide variety of habitats, including primary lowland rainforests, disturbed and secondary rainforests, and riverine and coastal forests of nipa palm and mangrove. They also easily adjust to human settlements and are considered sacred at some Hindu temples and on some small islands, while a pest when around farms and villages. Typically it prefers disturbed habitats and forest periphery. The native range of this species includes most of mainland Southeast Asia, and the Maritime Southeast Asia islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, offshore islands, the islands of the Philippines, and the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Macaca fascicularis is an introduced alien species in several locations, including Hong Kong, western New Guinea, Anggaur Island in Palau, and Mauritius. Where they are non-native species—particularly on island ecosystems whose species often evolved in isolation from large predators -- M. fascicularis is a documented threat to many native species. This fact has led the World Conservation Union (IUCN) to list M. fascicularis as one of the "100 Worst Alien Invasive Species". Insofar as they are present as an alien invasive on several islands, they have been labelled a "weed" species and are yet another significant ecological threat to those ecosystems and the species within them. It is important to note, however, that M. fascicularis is not a biodiversity threat in their native range, as other species therein have adapted to their presence through evolutionary time.

Relationship with humans

Macaca fascicularis has been used extensively in medical experiments, in particular those connected with neuroscience. It has also been identified as a possible vector for Ebola virus and monkeypox, and is a known carrier of B-virus (Herpesvirus simiae). Nafovanny is the largest captive-breeding non-human primate facility in the world, and houses 30,000 macaques. The Crab-eating Macaque is one of the types of monkeys that have been used as space test flight animals. It has been discovered recently that Plasmodium knowlesi, which causes malaria in M.Conservation status

The Crab-eating Macaque has the third largest range of any primate species, behind only humans and the Rhesus Macaque. Since the wild harvest of the species for animal testing has been reduced by captive-breeding programs, the total population of M. fascicularis is not under significant threat. The IUCN Red List categorizes the species as "Lower Risk"; and CITES lists it as Appendix II ("not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival"). The umbrosa subspecies is argued to be of important biological significance. It has been recommended as a candidate for protection in the Nicobar islands, where its small, native population has been seriously fragmented (Umapathy et al., 2003). One main conservation concern is that in areas where M. fascicularis is non-native, their populations need to be monitored, managed, or eradicated where they have a negative impact on native flora/fauna.

Celebes Crested Macaque

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The Celebes Crested Macaque, also known as the Crested Black Macaque, Sulawesi Crested Macaque, or the Black "Ape", is an Old World monkey that lives in the northeast of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (Celebes) as well as on smaller neighboring islands.

Its skin and hairless face is, with the exception of some white hair in the shoulder range, entirely jet black. The long muzzle with high cheeks and the long hair tuft, or crest, at the top side of the head are remarkable. The tail is only approximately 2 cm (1 in) of stub. With a total body length of 45 cm (18 in) to 60 cm (24 in) and a weight of 7 to 10 kg, it is one of the smaller macaque species.

The Celebes Crested Macaque is a diurnal rain forest dweller. This macaque is primarily terrestrial, spending more than 60% of its day on the ground foraging for food and socializing, while sleeping and searching for food in the trees.

It lives in groups of 5 to 25 animals. Smaller groups have only a single male, while larger groups have up to four males. The females, however, always outnumber the males by about 4:1. Since young males must leave their birth group upon maturity, they sometimes form bachelor groups before they look for a connection to an existing mixed group. Communication consists of various sounds and gestures; such as the presentation of the long eyeteeth while grimacing a clear threatening gesture.

The Celebes Crested Macaque is frugivorous, with 70% of its diet consisting of fruits. It also consumes leaves, buds, seeds, fungus, birds and bird eggs, insects (such as caterpillars), and the occasional small lizard or frog.

The Celebes Crested Macaque is promiscuous, with both males and females mating multiple times with multiple partners. The receptivity of the females is clearly indicated by a tumescence (swelling) and redness which, in contrast to the black skin color, is particularly remarkable. The gestation time is 174 days, and the birth of the usually single offspring happens in the spring when food is more plentiful. Young animals are nursed approximately one year and become fully mature in 3 to 4 years, females somewhat sooner than males. Its life expectancy is estimated at approximately 20 years.

Because it devastates crops and fields, the Celebes Crested Macaque is hunted as a pest. It is also hunted to provide bushmeat. Clearing the rain forests further threatens its survival. Its situation on the small neighbouring islands of Sulawesi (such as Bacan) is somewhat better, since these have a low human population. The total population of the macaque on Sulawesi is estimated at 4,000-6,000, while a booming population of up to 100,000 monkeys is found on Bacan.

A captive Crested Macaque named Natasha began walking on her hind legs after a stroke.

A recent series of survey trips to Sulawesi and the Minehasa forest area have been made in 2004-2009 by Vicki Melfi, who is EEP studbook holder for these macaques, based at Paignton Zoo / the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust. She has been monitoring population density which has declined from over 300 individuals per square kilometre in 1980 to 20 to 60 individuals today. A conservation programme Selamatkan Yaki - or 'Save the Yaki' as this macaque is known in the local language - has been launched with local partners and other conservation groups from Thailand, Germany and the Wildlife Conservation Society (based in USA). Both Newquay Zoo and Paignton Zoo are among a number of mostly European zoos which hold ex-situ breeding populations of this animal.

Tonkean Macaque

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The Tonkean Black Macaque or Tonkean Macaque is a species of primate in the Cercopithecidae family. It is endemic to central Sulawesi and the nearby Togian Islands in Indonesia. It is threatened by habitat loss.

Moor Macaque

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The Moor Macaque is an macaque with brown/black body fur with a pale rump patch and pink bare skin on the rump. It is about 50-58.5 cm and eats figs, bamboo seeds, buds, sprouts, invertebrates and cereals in tropical rainforests. It is sometimes called "dog-ape" because of its dog-like muzzles, although they are no more closely related to apes than any other Old World monkey is. It is endemic to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

The Moor Macaque is endangered mostly due to habitat loss from an expanding human population and deforestation to increase agricultural land area. It is estimated that only 1000 Moor Macaques are left in Sulawesi. Because several Sulawesi macaque species are endangered, information on ecology and behaviour is essential and conservation management plans are being designed.

Pagai Island Macaque

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The Pagai Island Macaque, also known as the Pagai Macaque or Bokkoi, is an Old World monkey that is endemic to the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra. It is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List due to its ever-shrinking habitat. It formerly included the overall darker M. siberu as a subspecies, but this arrangement is polyphyletic, leading to the two being classified as separate species. Both were formerly considered subspecies of M. nemestrina.

Description

Pagai Island Macaque males are generally larger than females. The males' body length ranges from 45-55 cm and females' body length is around 40–45 cm. Tail length is 13-16 cm for males and 10–13 cm for females. Males are also heavier, weighing around 6–9 kg while females weigh 4.5-6 kg. Their backs have a dark brown coloration, and chestnut to pale ochre on the sides of the neck, the front of the shoulders and the underside of this species. Legs are brown and their arms, reddish brown. The face of a Mentawai Macaques is furless and black-skinned with brown eyes. They have cheek pouches to carry food while foraging.

Habitat and ecology

The macaques' natural habitat is rainforest, but can also be found in riverine and coastal swamp-forests. It lives high above the forest floor in the canopy, forages between 24 and 36 meters and may sleep as high as 45 meters. The primary diet of the species is figs. They may split up into splinter groups to forage for food and to sleep. They will eat alongside groups of Mentawai Langurs. Macaca pagensis groups consist of around 5-25 indiviuals. There is typically a single male per group, along with adult females and their offspring. The male decides where to go and communicates this to the rest of the group with high-pitched cries. Roaming, solitary Pagai Island Macaques may challenge the dominant male for his position leading to aggressive fights. The natural predators of the species are the Crested Serpent Eagle and the Reticulated Python. When spotted the macaques will alarm the rest of the group with a short, gruff bark.

Reproduction

Females show fertility and willingness to mate by displaying their swollen and reddened genitals. Females crouch to initiate mating. The gestation period is between 5 to 6 months. A single offspring is born during the nighttime hours. The mother eats the placenta and licks the infant clean before morning. The mother and young share a close bond into adulthood.

Population and threats

The species' primary habitat is on the Mentawai Islands 150 km off the west coast of Sumatra. They populate three of the four major islands in the chain (North Pagai, South Pagai and Sipora). Due to deforestation by immigrants from the Indonesian mainland the species is now listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list. The primary reasons behind deforestation on the island are the clearing of large areas of land for cash crop and oil palm plantations, as well as commercial logging. As a result, the water levels in the forest rivers fluctuate to a much greater degree than before. The alternating flooding and low water levels has also caused an increase in the population of malarial mosquitoes.

Northern Pig-tailed Macaque

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The Northern Pig-tailed Macaque is a species of primate in the Cercopithecidae family. It is found in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Traditionally, it has been considered a subspecies of M. nemestrina.

Southern Pig-tailed Macaque

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The Southern Pig-tailed Macaque is a medium-sized Old World monkey found in the southern half of the Thai-Malay Peninsula (only just extending into southernmost Thailand), Borneo, Sumatra and Bangka Island. This omnivorous macaque is mostly found in forest, but will also enter plantations and gardens. It formerly included the Northern Pig-tailed, Pagai Island, and Siberut Macaques as subspecies.

Lion-tailed Macaque

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The Lion-tailed Macaque is an Old World monkey that is endemic to the Western Ghats of South India.

Physical Characteristics

The hair of the Lion-tailed Macaque is dark-brown or black. Its outstanding characteristic is the silver-white mane which surrounds the head from the cheeks down to its chin, which gives this monkey its German name of "Beard Ape". The hairless face is black colored. With a head-to-tail length of 45 to 60 cm and a weight of 3 to 10 kg, it ranks among the smaller macaques. The tail is medium length with a length of approximately 25 cm and is a black tuft at the end, similar to a lion's tail. The males tail-tuft is more developed than that of the females.

Gestation is approximately six months. The young are nursed for one year. Sexual maturity is reached at four years for females, six years for males. The life expectancy in the wild is approximately 20 years, while in captivity up to 30 years.

Behavior

The Lion-tailed Macaque is a diurnal rain forest dweller. It is a good climber and spends a majority of its life in the upper canopy of tropical moist evergreen forests. Unlike other macaques, it avoids humans. In group behavior, it is much like other macaques: it lives in hierarchical groups of usually ten to twenty animals, which consist of few males and many females. It is a territorial animal, defending its area first with loud cries towards the invading troops. If this proves fruitless, it brawls aggressively.

Lion-tailed macaque behaviour is characterized by typical patterns such as arboreal living, selectively feeding on a large variety of fruit trees, large inter-individual spaces while foraging, and time budgets with high proportion of time devoted to exploration and feeding. The Lion-tailed Macaque primarily eat indigenous fruits, leaves, buds, insects and small vertebrates in virgin forest but can adapt to rapid environmental change in areas of massive selective logging through behavioural modifications and broadening of food choices to include fruits, seeds, shoots, pith, flower, cone, mesocarp, and other parts of many non-indigenous and pioneer plants.

Population

A recent assessment for IUCN reports 3000-3500 of these animals live scattered over several areas in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Lion-tailed Macaque ranks among the rarest and most threatened primates. Their range has become increasingly isolated and fragmented by the spread of agriculture and tea, coffee, teak and cinchona, construction of water reservoirs for irrigation and power generation, and human settlements to support such activities. They don't live, feed or travel through plantations. Destruction of their habitat and the fact that they avoid human proximity, has led to the drastic decrease of their population.

During 1977 to 1980, public concern about the endangered lion-tailed macaque became the focal point of Save Silent Valley, India's fiercest environmental debate of the decade. During 1993 to 1996, fourteen troops of lion-tailed macaque were observed in Silent Valley National Park, Kerala, one of the most undisturbed viable habitats left for the lion-tailed macaque. A self-sustainable single population of 32 groups of lion-tailed macaques occurred in Sirsi-Honnavara, Karnataka, the northernmost population of the species. A local census concluded in 2007, conducted in the Theni District of Tamil Nadu, put their numbers at around 250, which was considered encouraging, because till then, there had not been any records of Lion-tailed Macaques in that specific area. Many zoos take part in breeding programs which help to secure the survival of this species. 368 of these Macaque are reported to live in zoos.

Barbary Macaque

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The Barbary Macaque is a macaque with only a stub of a tail. Found in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and Morocco with a small, possibly introduced, population in Gibraltar, the Barbary Macaque is one of the best-known Old World monkey species. Besides humans, they are the only primates that live freely in Europe. Although the species is commonly referred to as the "Barbary Ape", the Barbary Macaque is a true monkey, not an ape.

Appearance

This monkey is yellowish-brown to grey with lighter undersides, growing to a maximum size of 75 cm (30 in) and 13 kg (29 lb). Its face is a dark pink and its tail is vestigial. The front limbs of this monkey are longer than its hind limbs. Females are somewhat smaller than males.

Ecology

Dwelling in forests of cedar, pine and oak, the Barbary Macaque may frequent elevations of 2,100 m (6,900 ft) or more. It is a diurnal animal, dividing its time more or less equally between arboreal and terrestrial territory. Mostly herbivorous, this monkey feeds on leaves, roots, and fruit, but will also eat insects. By day, the Barbary Macaque patrols a territory which may span several square kilometers; it peacefully co-exists with other primate species, sharing watering holes without incident. The Barbary Macaque moves about energetically on all fours, occasionally rising erect on its hind limbs to survey for threats.

The Barbary Macaque is a gregarious monkey, forming mixed groups of several females and males; the troop of 10 to 30 individuals is matriarchal, with its hierarchy determined by lineage to the lead female. Unlike other macaques, the males participate in rearing the young; much time is spent playing and grooming with them. In this way, a strong social bond is formed between a male and his offspring, both the male's own and those of others in the troop. This may be a result of selectiveness on the part of the females, who seem to prefer highly parental males.

The mating season runs from November through March. After a gestation period of 147 to 192 days, typically one baby per female is born; twins are a rarity. The monkeys reach maturity at 3 to 4 years of age, and may live for 20 years or more.

Status

The habitat of the Barbary Macaque is under threat from increased logging activity; they are listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List. Local farmers view the monkeys as pests, and engage in extermination of the species. Once common throughout northern Africa and southern Europe, there are estimated to be just 12,000 to 21,000 Barbary Macaques left.

Human use

Many of the mistaken ideas about human anatomy contained in the writings of Galen are apparently due to his use of these animals, the anthropoid available to him, in dissections. Strong cultural taboos of his time prevented his performing any actual dissections of human cadavers, even in his role as physician and teacher of physicians.

Gibraltar population

The last wild population in Europe is that of Gibraltar, which unlike that of North Africa is thriving. At present there are some 230 animals in five troops occupying the area of the Upper Rock, though occasional forays into the town may result in damages to personal property.

Mountain Gorilla

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The Mountain Gorilla is one of the two subspecies of the Eastern Gorilla. There are two populations. One is found in the Virunga volcanic mountains of Central Africa, within three national parks: Mgahinga, in south-west Uganda; Volcanoes, in north-west Rwanda; and Virunga in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The other is found in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Some say that the Bwindi population in Uganda is a third subspecies, though no description has been finished.

Description

The Mountain Gorilla has longer and darker hair than other gorilla species, allowing it to live in hot or cold weather and travel into areas where temperatures drop below 0 °C (32 °F). It has chosen a life on the ground more than any other non-human primate, and its feet most resemble those of humans. Gorillas can be identified by nose prints unique to each individual.^{[citation needed]} Males usually weigh twice as much as the females, and this subspecies is on average the largest of all gorillas. Adult males have more pronounced bony crests on the top and back of their skulls, giving their heads a more conical shape. These crests anchor the powerful masseter muscles, which attach to the lower jaw, or mandible. Adult females also have these crests, but they are less pronounced.

Adult males are called silverbacks because a saddle of gray or silver-colored hair develops on their backs with age. The hair on their backs is shorter than on most other body parts, and their arm hair is especially long. Upright, males reach 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) in height, with an arm span of 2.3 m (7 ft 7 in) and weigh 155 kg (340 lb).^[4] The tallest silverback recorded was a 1.94 m (6 ft 4 in) individual shot in Alimbongo, northern Kivu in May 1938 and the heaviest was a 1.83 m (6 ft) silverback shot in Ambam, Cameroon which weighed about 266 kg (590 lb).^[3]

The Mountain Gorilla is primarily terrestrial and quadrupedal. However, it will climb into fruiting trees if the branches can carry its weight, and it is capable of running bipedally up to 6 m (20 ft).^{[citation needed]} Like all great apes other than humans, its arms are longer than its legs. It moves by knuckle-walking (like the Common Chimpanzee, but unlike the Bonobo and both orangutan species), supporting its weight on the backs of its curved fingers rather than its palms.^{[citation needed]}

The Mountain Gorilla is diurnal, most active between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Many of these hours are spent eating, as large quantities of food are needed to sustain its massive bulk. It forages in early morning, rests during the late morning and around midday, and in the afternoon it forages again before resting at night. Each gorilla builds a nest from surrounding vegetation to sleep in, constructing a new one every evening. Only infants sleep in the same nest as their mothers. They leave their sleeping sites when the sun rises at around 6 am, except when it is cold and overcast; then they often stay longer in their nests.

Habitat and diet

The Mountain Gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2,200–4,300 metres (7,200–14,000 ft). Most are found on the slopes of three of the dormant volcanoes: Karisimbi, Mikeno, and Visoke. The vegetation is very dense at the bottom of the mountains, becoming more sparse at higher elevations, and the forests where the Mountain Gorilla lives are often cloudy, misty and cold.

The Mountain Gorilla is primarily an herbivore; the majority of its diet is composed of the leaves, shoots and stems (85.8%) of 142 plant species. It also feeds on bark (6.9%), roots (3.3%), flowers (2.3%), and fruit (1.7%), as well as small invertebrates. (0.1%). Adult males can eat up to 34 kilograms (75 lb) of vegetation a day, while a female can eat as much as 18 kilograms (40 lb).

The home range size (the area used by one group of gorillas during one year) is influenced by availability of food sources and usually includes several vegetation zones. George Schaller identified ten distinct zones, including: the bamboo forests at 2,200–2,800 metres (7,200–9,200 ft); the Hagenia forests at 2,800–3,400 metres (9,200–11,000 ft); and the giant senecio zone at 3,400–4,300 metres (11,000–14,000 ft). The Mountain Gorilla spends most of its time in the Hagenia forests, where gallium vines are found year-round. All parts of this vine are consumed: leaves, stems, flowers, and berries. It travels to the bamboo forests during the few months of the year fresh shoots are available, and it climbs into subalpine regions to eat the soft centers of giant senecio trees.

Reproduction

A newborn gorilla weighs about 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb), and spends its first few months of life in constant physical contact with its mother. In their first few months of life, infant Mountain Gorillas ride on their mother's backs. At an earlier stage, the mother will almost constantly be holding the infant. It begins to walk at around four or five months, and starts to put plant parts in its mouth between four and six months. At eight months it regularly ingests solid food. Weaning occurs around three years of age, although juveniles may remain with their mothers for years after that.

Young male and female gorillas are considered infants from birth until three years of age, juvenile between the ages of about three and six, and subadult from six to about eight years old. Blackbacks are sexually immature males from around eight years until they have developed the silver saddle and large canines of maturity. Females begin to ovulate at 7 or 8 years of age and have their first infant between the ages of 10 and 12. Males generally do not start breeding before the age of 15.

The Mountain Gorilla has no mating season and females usually initiate mating behavior. The length of their menstrual cycle is about 28 days with 1-3 fertile days, and ovulation ceases for 3–5 years after reproducing. The length of gestation is eight and a half months. Females generally bear one infant every 6 to 8 years, and may leave only 2–6 offspring over a 40 year life span. Males that have harems of 3–4 females increase their reproductive output by fathering 10–20 offspring over 50 years.

Social structure

The Mountain Gorilla is highly social, and lives in relatively stable, cohesive groups held together by long-term bonds between adult males and females. Relationships among females are relatively weak. These groups are nonterritorial; the silverback generally defends his group rather than his territory. In the Virunga Mountain Gorillas, the average length of tenure for a dominant silverback is 4.7 years.

61% of groups are composed of one adult male and a number of females and 36% contain more than one adult male. The remaining gorillas are either lone males or exclusively male groups, usually made up of one mature male and a few younger males. Group sizes vary from five to thirty, with an average of ten individuals. A typical group contains: one silverback, who is the group's undisputed leader; one or two blackbacks, who act as sentries; three to four sexually mature females, who are ordinarily bonded to the dominant silverback for life; and from three to six juveniles and infants.

Most males, and about 60% of females, leave their natal group. Males leave when they are about 11 years old, and often the separation process is slow: they spend more and more time on the edge of the group until they leave altogether.

The dominant silverback generally determines the movements of the group, leading it to appropriate feeding sites throughout the year. He also mediates conflicts within the group and protects it from external threats. He is the center of attention during rest sessions, and young animals frequently stay close to him and include him in their games. If a mother dies or leaves the group, the silverback is usually the one who looks after his abandoned offspring, even allowing them to sleep in his nest. Experienced silverbacks are capable of removing poachers' snares from the hands or feet of their group members.

When the dominant silverback dies or is killed by disease, accident, or poachers, the family group may be severely disrupted. Unless he leaves behind a male descendant capable of taking over his position, the group will either split up or be taken over in its entirety by an unrelated male. When a new silverback takes control of a family group, he may kill all of the infants of the dead silverback. This practice of infanticide is an effective reproductive strategy, in that the newly acquired females are then able to conceive the new male's offspring. Infanticide has not been observed in stable groups.

Behavior

Aggression

Severe aggression is rare in stable groups, but when two Mountain Gorilla groups meet, the two silverbacks can sometimes engage in a fight to the death, using their canines to cause deep, gaping injuries. The entire sequence has nine steps: (1) progressively quickening hooting, (2) symbolic feeding, (3) rising bipedally, (4) throwing vegetation, (5) chest-beating with cupped hands, (6) one leg kick, (7) sideways running, two-legged to four-legged, (8) slapping and tearing vegetation, and (9) thumping the ground with palms to end display.

Affiliation

The midday rest period is an important time for establishing and reinforcing relationships within the group. Mutual grooming reinforces social bonds, and helps keep hair free from dirt and parasites. It is not as common among gorillas as in other primates, although females groom their offspring regularly. Young gorillas play often and are more arboreal than the large adults. Playing helps them learn how to communicate and behave within the group. Activities include wrestling, chasing and somersaults. The silverback and his females tolerate and even participate if encouraged.

Vocalization

Twenty-five distinct vocalizations are recognized, many of which are used primarily for group communication within dense vegetation. Sounds classified as grunts and barks are heard most frequently while traveling, and indicate the whereabouts of individual group members. They may also be used during social interactions when discipline is required. Screams and roars signal alarm or warning, and are produced most often by silverbacks. Deep, rumbling belches suggest contentment and are heard frequently during feeding and resting periods. They are the most common form of intragroup communication.

Fears

For reasons unknown, Mountain Gorillas that have been studied appear to be naturally afraid of certain reptiles. Infants, whose natural behavior is to chase anything that moves, will go out of their way to avoid chameleons and caterpillars. Koko, the gorilla trained in sign language, is afraid of crocodiles and alligators, even though she was born in captivity and has never seen them. They are also afraid of water and will cross streams only if they can do so without getting wet (ie. crossing over fallen logs). Dian Fossey observed and noted the Mountain Gorilla's obvious dislike of rain, as well.

Research

In October 1902, Captain Robert von Beringe (1865-1940) shot two large apes during an expedition to establish the boundaries of German East Africa. One of the apes was recovered and sent to the Zoological Museum in Berlin, where Professor Paul Matschie (1861-1926) classified the animal as a new form of gorilla and named it Gorilla beringei after the man who discovered it. In 1925 Carl Akeley, a hunter from the American Museum of Natural History who wished to study the gorillas, convinced Albert I of Belgium to establish the Albert National Park to protect the animals of the Virunga mountains.

George Schaller began his 20 month observation of the Mountain Gorillas in 1959, subsequently publishing two books: The Mountain Gorilla and The Year of the Gorilla. Little was known about the life of the Mountain Gorilla before his research, which described its social organization, life history, and ecology. Following Schaller, Dian Fossey began what would become a 13 year study in 1967. Fossey made new observations, completed the first accurate census, and established active conservation practices, such as anti-poaching patrols. The Digit Fund, which Dian Fossey started, continued her work and was later renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. The Fund's Karisoke Research Center monitors and protects the mountain gorillas of the Virungas. A census in 2004 showed a population of 380, most of it in the Karisoke sector and a significant increase since the time of Fossey's last count.

In April 2007 it was announced that a census of the Mountain Gorillas in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park had recorded a 6% increase in population since a census in 2002.

Cross River Gorilla

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The Cross River Gorilla is a subspecies of the Western Gorilla that can be found on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, in both tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests which are also home to the Nigeria-Cameroon Chimpanzee, another subspecies of great ape. While all Western Gorillas are Critically Endangered (in the case of the Western Lowland Gorilla due in part to Ebola virus), the Cross River Gorilla is the most endangered of the African apes, and is one of the world's 25 most endangered primates according to the IUCN Primate Specialist Group.

The Cross River Gorilla differs from the Western Lowland Gorilla in both skull and tooth dimensions. Based on these differences, the Cross River gorilla was described as a distinct subspecies in 2000, though previous analyses had also recognized the distinctiveness of these gorillas.

Estimates on the number of Cross River Gorillas remaining is about 280 in the wild, concentrated in approximately 11 locations. Recent genetic research and field surveys suggest that these locations are linked by the occasional migration of individual gorillas. The nearest population of Western Lowland Gorilla is some 250 km away. Both loss of habitat and intense hunting for bushmeat have contributed to the decline of this subspecies. A conservation plan for the Cross River gorilla was published in 2007 and outlines the most important actions necessary to preserve this subspecies. Richard Black of the BBC has reported that the government of Cameroon has created the Takamanda National Park on the border with Nigeria, as an attempt to protect these Gorillas. The park now forms part of an important trans-boundary protected area with Nigeria’s Cross River National Park, safeguarding an estimated 115 gorillas—a third of the Cross River gorilla population—along with other rare species. The hope is that the gorillas should be able to move between the Takamanda reserve in Cameroon over the border to Nigeria's Cross River National Park.

In 2009, the camera-shy Cross River Gorilla was finally captured on professional video on a forested mountain in Cameroon.

Intelligent behaviour

A study published in 2007 in the American Journal of Primatology announced the discovery of the fighting back against possible threats from humans. They "found several instances of gorillas throwing sticks and clumps of grass." This is unusual, because gorillas usually flee and rarely charge when encountered by humans.

Western Lowland Gorilla

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The Western Lowland Gorilla is a subspecies of the Western Gorilla that lives in montane, primary, and secondary forests and lowland swamps in Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It is the gorilla usually found in zoos. Adult male Gorillas are prone to cardiomyopathy, a degenerative heart disease. Babec, a Western Lowland Gorilla on exhibit at the Birmingham Zoo in Birmingham, Alabama (USA) was the first gorilla to receive an artificial pacemaker. Binti Jua, who resides at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, saved a three year old boy who fell into her enclosure in 1996.

Behaviour

They live in family groupings of one dominant male, five to seven adult females, children and adolescents, and possibly a few non-dominant males. Gorillas reproduce slowly because females do not begin reproducing until the age of nine or ten and usually only produce one baby approximately every five years.

Size

A male Western Lowland Gorilla can stand 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) tall and weigh almost 200 kg (440 lb).

Diet

The Western Lowland Gorilla eats plants (including bamboo) and occasionally insects. Males eat up to 9 kg (20 lb) a day.

Conservation

In the 1980s, a census taken of the gorilla populations in equatorial Africa was thought to be 100,000. Researchers adjusted the figure after years of poaching and deforestation had reduced the population to approximately 50,000. Surveys conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2006 and 2007 found more than 100,000 previously unreported gorillas have been living in the swamp forests of Lake Tele Community Reserve and in neighbouring Marantaceae (dryland) forests in the Republic of the Congo. With the new discovery, the current population of Western Lowland Gorillas could be around 150,000–200,000. However, the gorilla remains vulnerable to Ebola, deforestation, and poaching.

Western Gorilla

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The Western Gorilla is a great ape and the most populous species of the genus Gorilla.

Appearance

The Western Gorilla is lighter in color than its Eastern cousin. The Western Lowland Gorilla can be brown or greyish with a yellowish forehead. It also has an overhanging tip on its nose, which the Eastern Gorilla doesn't have. Males measure 170–183 cm and weigh 140–278 kg. Females measure 140–155 cm and weigh 60–120 kg. The Western Gorilla is more slender then the Eastern Gorilla. The Cross River Gorilla differs from the Western Lowland Gorilla in both skull and tooth dimensions. It is also about 10–15 cm taller and 20–35 kg heavier.

Behavior and ecology

Western gorillas live in groups that vary in size between 2 and 20 individuals, composed of at least one male, several females and their offspring. A dominant male silverback heads the group, with younger males usually leaving the group when they reach maturity. Females transfer to another group before breeding, which begins at eight to nine years old; they care for their young infant for the first three to four years of its life. There is therefore a long interval between births, which partly explains the slow population growth rates that make the western gorilla so vulnerable to poaching. Due to the long gestation time, long period of parental care, and infant mortality, a female gorilla will only give birth to an offspring that survives to maturity every six to eight years. Gorillas are long-lived and may survive for as long as 40 years in the wild.

Fruit forms a large part of the western gorilla's diet and they will travel further each day in search of fruiting trees than their eastern relatives. The distance that gorillas travel in the forest each day while they are searching for fruit trees varies between one and four kilometres. A group's home range may be as large as 30 square kilometres but is not actively defended. Wild Western Gorillas are known to use tools.

Status

The World Conservation Union lists the Western Gorilla as critically endangered, the most severe denomination next to global extinction, on its 2007 Red List of Threatened Species. It is thought that the Ebola virus might be depleting Western Gorilla populations to a point where it might become impossible for them to recover.

2008 Discovery

In mid 2008, researchers discovered as many as 125,000 previously-undiscovered Gorillas in the Republic of Congo. This discovery could more than double the known population of the animals, though the effect that the discovery will have on the Gorillas' conservation status is currently unknown.

Sumatran Orangutan

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The Sumatran Orangutan is the rarer of the two species of orangutans. Living on and endemic to Sumatra island of Indonesia, it is smaller than the Bornean Orangutan. The Sumatran Orangutan grows to about 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) tall and 90 kilograms (200 lb) in males. Females are smaller, averaging 90 centimetres (3.0 ft) and 45 kilograms (99 lb).

Behaviour

Compared to the Bornean Orangutan, the Sumatran Orangutan tends to be more frugivorous and especially insectivorous. Preferred fruits include figs and jackfruits. It also will eat bird eggs and small vertebrates. The Sumatran Orangutans spend far less time feeding on the inner bark of trees.

Wild Sumatran Orangutans in the Suaq Balimbing swamp have been observed using tools. An orangutan will break off a tree branch that's about a foot long, snap off the twigs and fray one end. It then will use the stick to dig in tree holes for termites. They'll also use the stick to poke a bee's nest wall, move it around and catch the honey. In addition, orangutans use tools to eat fruit. When the fruit of the Neesia tree ripens, its hard, ridged husk softens until it falls open. Inside are seeds that the orangutans love, but they are surrounded by fiberglass-like hairs that are painful if eaten. A Neesia-eating orangutan will select a five-inch stick, strip off its bark, and then carefully collect the hairs with it. Once the fruit is safe, the ape will eat the seeds using the stick or its fingers. Although similar swamps can be found in Borneo, wild Bornean Orangutans have not been seen using these types of tools.

NHNZ filmed the Sumatran Orangutan for its show Wild Asia: In the Realm of the Red Ape; it showed one of them using a simple tool, a twig, to pry food from difficult places. There is also a sequence of an animal using a large leaf as an umbrella in a tropical rainstorm.

The Sumatran Orangutan is also more arboreal than its Bornean cousin; this could be because of the presence of large predators like the Sumatran Tiger. It moves through the trees by brachiation.

Life cycle

The Sumatran Orangutan is more social than its Bornean counterpart. Groups of these orangutans gather to feed on the mass amount of fruiting on the fig trees. However adult males generally avoid contact with other adult males. Rape is common among orangutans. Sub-adult males will try to mate with any female, though they probably mostly fail to impregnate them since mature females are easily capable of fending them off. Mature females prefer to mate with mature males.

Interval birth rates for Sumatran Orangutan were longer than the Bornean ones and are the longest reported interval birth rates among the great apes. Sumatran orangutans give birth when they are about 15 years old. Infant orangutans will stay close to their mother for up to three years. Even after that, the young will still associate with their mother. Both orangutan species are likely to live several decades; the longevity estimate can span for more than 50 years. The average of the first reproduction of P. abelii is around 12.3 years old with no indication of menopause.

Status

The Sumatran orangutan is endemic to Sumatra island and is particularly restricted in the north of the island. In the wild, Sumatran orangutans survive in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD), the northernmost tip of Sumatra. The primate was once more widespread, as they were found more to the south in the 1800s such as in Jambi and Padang. There are small populations in the North Sumatra province along the border with NAD, particularly in the Lake Toba forests. A survey in the Lake Toba found only two inhabited areas, Bukit Lawang (defined as the animal sanctuary) and Gunung Leuser National Park. In 2002, the World Conservation Union put the species on the IUCN Red List with critically endangered status.

A survey in 2004 estimated that around 7,300 sumatran orangutans still live in the wild.Some of them are being protected in five areas in Gunung Leuser National Park; others live in unprotected areas: northwest and northeast Aceh block, West Batang Toru river, East Sarulla and Sidiangkat. A successful breeding program has been established in Bukit Tiga Puluh National Park in Jambi and Riau provinces.

Nonja, thought to be the world's oldest in captivity or the wild at the time of its death, died at the Miami MetroZoo at the age of 55. The oldest captive Sumatran orangutan was, until her death in Singapore Zoo on 8 February 2008 at the age of 48, Ah Meng, born in 1960.

Bornean Orangutan

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The Bornean Orangutan, is a species of orangutan native to the island of Borneo. Together with the slightly smaller Sumatran Orangutan, it belongs to the only genus of great apes native to Asia. The Bornean Orangutan has a life span of about 35 to 40 years in the wild; in captivity it can live to be 60. A survey of wild orangutans found that males are typically 75 kg (165 lb), ranging from 50–90 kg (110-199 lb), and 1.2-1.4 m (4-4.7 ft) long; females averaging 38.5 kg (82 lb), ranging from 30–50 kg (66-110 lb), and 1-1.2 m (3.3–4 ft) long.

Taxonomy

There is evidence that there was gene flow between the geographically isolated Bornean Orangutan populations until recently. The Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan species diverged 1.5 – 1.7 million years ago. This occurred well before the two islands (Borneo and Sumatra) separated. The two species of orangutan are more distantly related than the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. Despite this difference, the two orangutan species were only considered subspecies until as recently as 1996, following sequencing of mtDNA.

The Bornean Orangutan has three subspecies:

Northwest Bornean Orangutan P. p. pygmaeus - Sarawak (Malaysia) & northern West Kalimantan (Indonesia)
Central Bornean Orangutan P. p. wurmbii - Southern West Kalimantan & Central Kalimantan (Indonesia)
Northeast Bornean Orangutan P. p. morio - East Kalimantan (Indonesia) & Sabah (Malaysia)

The population currently listed as P. p. wurmbii may be closer to the Sumatran Orangutan (P. abelii) than the Bornean Orangutan. If confirmed, abelii would be a subspecies of P. wurmbii (Tiedeman, 1808). Regardless, the type locality of pygmaeus has not been established beyond doubts, and may be from the population currently listed as wurmbii (in which case wurmbii would be a junior synonym of pygmaeus, while one of the names currently considered a junior synonym of pygmaeus would take precedence for the taxon in Sarawak and northern West Kalimantan). To further confuse, the name morio, as well as various junior synonyms that have been suggested, have been considered likely to all be junior synonyms of the population listed as pygmaeus in the above, thus leaving the taxon found in East Kalimantan and Sabah unnamed.

Yellow-cheeked Gibbon

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The Yellow-cheeked Gibbon, also called the Yellow-cheeked Crested Gibbon, the Golden-cheeked Crested Gibbon or the Buffed-cheeked Gibbon, is a species of gibbon native to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The Yellow-cheeked Gibbon is born blond and later turns black, and males carry this colouring through their lifespan and have the distinguishing golden cheeks; females are born blonde to blend into their mother's fur but they later turn black and turn back to blond at sexual maturity and only have a black cap on the top of their heads.

This diurnal and arboreal gibbon lives in primary tropical rainforest, foraging for fruits, using brachiation to move through the trees.

The Yellow-cheeked Gibbon, like all gibbon species, has a unique song which is usually initiated by the male. The female will then join in and sing with the male to reinforce their bond and announce to other gibbons that they are a pair in a specific territory. The male usually finishes the song after the female has stopped singing.

Little is known about this species in the wild, but it is thought that it has a life span of approximately 46 years.

A recent report by the Wildlife Conservation Society counted 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in Cambodia’s Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, an estimate that represents the largest known population of the species in the world.

Northern White-cheeked Gibbon

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The Northern White-cheeked Gibbon is a species of gibbon native to Vietnam, Laos, and the Yunnan province of China. It is closely related to the Southern White-cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus siki), with which it was previously considered conspecific. The females of the two species are virtually indistinguishable in appearance.

Black Crested Gibbon

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The Black Crested Gibbon is an endangered species of gibbon found in India, the Malay archipelago and Indochina. There are 4 subspecies.

Physical Characteristics

The length from of the head to the end of body is 45-64cm and weighs about 5.7kg. Males and females are strikingly different in appearance with males almost completely black, but sometimes with white or buff cheeks, and females a golden or buff colour with variable black patches, including a black streak on the head.

Distribution and Habitat

The black-crested gibbon inhabits tropical evergreen broad-leaved forests and semi-deciduous monsoon forests .

Biology

Gibbons are forest dwellers and are well known for their habit of swinging between the branches of the rainforest on their long arms, a method of locomotion known as brachiation. Gibbons are also adept however, at walking upright, both on the ground and in the trees. Black-crested gibbons live in small family groups consisting of a monogamous male and female and their offspring, there are also reports that groups may contain additional mature females. These apes are predominantly arboreal and the group forages and sleeps amongst the trees. Led by the female, the breeding pair partakes in vigorous bouts of singing in the morning, which hauntingly echo through the forest. It is believed that these ‘duets' are essential in pair bond formation and reinforcement, but also serve to advertise the presence of the group within the territory. A single young is born every two to three years and the infant is usually weaned once it reaches 2 years old.

Diet

Black-crested gibbons feed preferentially on ripe sugar rich fruit such as figs, although they also supplement their diet with leaves and insects.

Glossary

ARBOREAL: Living in trees.

BRACHIATION: In some Primates, a method of locomotion when the animal swings hand over hand from branch to branch.

MONOGAMY: Mating system in which a male and female mate exclusively with each other. The pair bond may last for one season or may be life-long.

SUBSPECIES: A population usually restricted to a geographical area that differs from other populations of the same species, but not to the extent of being classified as a separate species.

Siamang

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The Siamang is a tailless, arboreal, black furred gibbon native to the forests of Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra. The largest of the lesser apes, the Siamang can be twice the size of other gibbons, reaching 1 m in height, and weighing up to 14 kg. The Siamang is the only species in the genus Symphalangus.

The Siamang is distinctive for two reasons. The first is that two fingers on each hand are fused together — hence the name "syndactylus", from the Ancient Greek sun-, "united" + daktulos "finger". The second is the large "gular sac" (found in both male and female of the species), which is a throat pouch that can be inflated to the size of its head, allowing the Siamang to make loud resonating calls or songs.

There may be two subspecies of the Siamang. If so, they are the nominate Sumatran Siamang (S. s. syndactylus) and the Malaysian Siamang (S. s. continentis, in peninsular Malaysia).Otherwise, the Malaysian individuals are only a population. The Siamang is the only gibbon which occurs sympatrically with other gibbons; its two ranges are entirely within the combined ranges of the Agile Gibbon and the Lar Gibbon. Although the siamang is given a different name than other gibbons, this division is not cladistically sound, since the genus Nomascus split from the rest of the gibbons before Symphalangus split

The Siamang can live up to 30+ years in captivity.

While the illegal pet trade takes a toll on wild populations, the principal threat to the Siamang is habitat loss in both Malaysia and Sumatra. Palm oil production is clearing large swathes of forest, reducing the habitat of the Siamang, along with that of other species such as the Sumatran Tiger.

Ecology

The Siamang inhabits the forest remnants of Sumatra Island and the Malay Peninsula, and is widely distributed from lowland forest to montane forest, even a rainforest. And can be found at altitudes of up to 3800 m . The Siamang lives in groups of up to 6 individuals (4 individuals on average) with a home range 23 hectares on average.. Their day ranges are substantially smaller than those of sympatric Hylobates species, often less than 1 km. The Siamang's melodious choir singing breaks the forest's silence in the early morning after the Agile Gibbon or Lar Gibbon's calls. The Siamang in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula are similar in appearance, but there are some differences in behaviour between the two populations.

Diet

The Siamang mainly eats various parts of plants. The Sumatran Siamang is more frugivorous than its Malayan cousin, with fruit making up to 60% of its diet. The Siamang eats at least 160 species of plants, from vines to woody plants. Its major food is figs (Ficus spp.), a member of Moraceae family. The Siamang prefers to eat ripe fruit rather than unripe fruit, and young leaves rather than old leaves. It eats flowers and a few animals, mostly insects. When the Siamang eats large flowers, it will eat only the corolla (petal), but it will eat all parts of smaller flowers, with the small fruit collected in its hand before being consumed. When it eats big and hard seeds or seeds with sharp edge it will peel out the fruit flesh and throw away the seed. Although its diet consists of substantial portions of fruit, it is the most folivorous of all members of Hylobatidae. As it is also the largest gibbon, and thus fits well with the general primate dietary trend in which larger primates tend to be more folivorous

Demography and population

A group of Siamang normally consist of an adult dominant male, an adult dominant female, with offspring, infant and sometimes a sub-adult. The sub-adult usually leaves the group after the age 6 to 8 years; sub-adult females tend to leave the group earlier than sub-adult males. Siamang males tend to offer more paternal care than other members of the family Hylobatidae, taking up a major role in carrying the infant after it is about 8 months old. The infant typically returns to its mother to sleep and nurse. A study in relation to effect of habitat disturbance on the Siamang found that group composition is varied in age-sex structure between intact forest and post-burnt forest. The post-burnt population was more adult and sub-adults than the intact population. Post-burnt groups contain fewer infants, small juveniles and large juveniles compared to intact forest groups. Infant survival rates in post-burnt groups are lower than in intact forests. The number of individuals in intact forests is higher than in post-burnt forests. The Siamang in disturbed forests live in small groups and have a density lower than in intact forests because of lack of food resources and trees for living.

In the 1980s, the Indonesian population of the Siamang in the wild was estimated to be 360,000 individuals. This seems over-estimate today, as an example, Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (BBSNP) is the third largest protected area (3,568 km²) in Sumatra, of which approximately 2,570 km² remains under forest cover inhabit by 22,390 siamangs (in 2002 censuses). According to two different research projects conducted in Sumatra, the Siamang prefer to inhabit lowland forest below between 500 m in altitude and over 1000 m above sea level.

Behavior

The Siamang tends to rest for more than 50% of its waking period (from dawn to dusk), followed by feeding, moving, foraging and social activities. It takes more rest during midday, taking time to groom each other or play. During resting time it usually uses a branch of a large tree lying on their back or on their stomach. Feeding behaviors, foraging, and moving are most often in the morning and after resting time.

In the dry season the length of the Siamang's daily range is longer than in the rainy season. The Siamang in southern Sumatra undertakes less foraging than the Siamang in other places because it eats more fruit and therefore consumes more nutrition, which results in less time needed for looking for food. Sometimes the Siamang will spend all of the day in one big fruiting tree, just moving out when it wants to rest and then coming back again to fruiting trees.

Role of calling

The Siamang starts its day by calling in the early morning and calls less after midday, with the peak of their calls around 9:00 am to 10:00 am. Most of the Siamang's calls are directed to its neighbours rather than to inside its home range. This means that the Siamang's calling is in response to disturbances and is to defend its territory. Calls in the late morning typically happen when it meets or sees another Siamang group. The edge of the Siamang's home range, which may overlap another, is often the places where calling is made. Counter-call (co-response calling) occasionally happens near the border or in the overlap area. Calls are numerous when fruit is more abundant rather than when fruit is less available. Branch shaking, swinging, and moving around the tree crowns accompany the calling. This movement might be to show the other groups where they are.

The Siamang prefers calling in the living, high and big trees, it might be the places where another group is easy to see. Beside that, living, big, and tall trees can support Siamang movement. Calling trees are usually near feeding trees but sometimes they call in the feeding trees.

Siamang and their habitat

As a frugivorous animal, the Siamang disperses seeds through defacation as it travels across its territory. The Siamang can carry seed and defecate over 300 m with the shortest distance being 47.6 m from the seed resource, which supports the forest regeneration and succession.

Threats to population

The Siamang, as an arboreal primate, absolutely depends on the forest for existence, needing trees for its living. At the moment, the Siamang is facing a population decrease due to habitat loss, poaching and hunting.

Habitat loss

A major threat to the Siamang is habitat loss due to plantation, forest fire, illegal logging, encroachment, and human development. Firstly, palm oil plantations have removed large areas of the Siamang's habitat in the last four decades. Since 2002 107,000 square kilometres of palm oil have been planted, which has replaced much rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia, where the Siamang originally used to live. Secondly, in the last two decades, forest fire destroyed more than 20,000 km² of Sumatran rainforest, mainly in the lowland area where most of the Siamang live. Thirdly, the rate of illegal logging in Indonesia increased from 1980 to 1995 and even more rapidly after the reformation era beginning in 1998.

These illegal activities devastated the remaining tropical rainforest especially in Sumatra. Fourthly, forest encroachments change forest cover into cultivated land, for example; the rising price of coffee in 1998 has been encouraging people in Sumatra to replace the forest with coffee plantation. Fifthly, development in many areas needs infrastructure such as roads, which now divide a lot of conservation areas have been caused forest fragmentation and edge effects. Unfortunately, the Siamang as an arboreal primate faces difficulty because road establishment has disconnected their pathways.

Poaching and hunting

Unlike other parts of Asia, primates are not hunted for their meat in Indonesia (the exception is in Chinese restaurants in Indonesia which sometimes serve macaque on their menu). However, they are poached and hunted for the illegal pet trade, mostly for infant Siamang. Poachers kill the mothers because mother Siamang are highly protective of their infants. It is therefore very difficult to remove the infant without first killing the mother. Despite the fact that most Siamang on the market are infants many infants nevertheless die during transportation.

Pileated Gibbon

2010-01-10T06:45:00.001-08:00

The Pileated Gibbon is a primate in the Hylobatidae or gibbon family.

The Pileated Gibbon has sexual dimorphism in fur coloration: males have a purely black fur, while the females are have a white-grey colored fur with only the belly and head black. The white and often shaggy hair ring around the head is common to both sexes.

The range of the Pileated Gibbon is eastern Thailand, western Cambodia and southwest Laos. Its lifestyle is much like other gibbons: diurnal and arboreal, it lives together in a monogamous pair, brachiates through the trees with its long arms, and predominantly eats fruits, leaves and small animals. Reproduction habits are not well known, but are presumed to be similar to the other gibbons.

Müller's Bornean Gibbon

2010-01-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

Müller's Bornean Gibbon, also known as the Grey Gibbon, is a primate in the Hylobatidae or gibbon family.

Unlike other gibbon species, Müller's Bornean Gibbon does not show sexual dimorphism in its fur coloration. Its fur is grey or brown colored with a ring of bright fur around its face. On the head it often has a darkly colored cap. With an average weight of 5.7 kg, it ranks among the smaller of the gibbons.

Müller's Bornean Gibbon is endemic to the island of Borneo, it inhabits the northern and eastern part of the island. In the southwest of the island the Agile Gibbon lives, and surprisingly their territories hardly overlap. They are diurnal rain forest dwellers that are characterized by the long arms that all gibbons have, with which they brachiate through the trees. The Grey Gibbon lives together in monogamous pairs, and defend their family territory against intruders with long, loud singing, which rings out above all else early in the morning. Its diet consists primarily of fruits. Little is known about the reproductive patterns of this species, but it is thought to be similar to that of other gibbon species.

Ornate Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

The Ornate Spider Monkey, is a subspecies of Geoffroy's Spider Monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Central America, native to Costa Rica and Panama. Other common names for this subspecies include the Brilliant Spider Monkey, the Common Spider Monkey,the Red Spider Monkey, the Panama Spider Monkey, and the Azuero Spider Monkey, the latter two of which were previously thought to be distinct subspecies panamensis and azuerensis, respectively.

Mexican Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

The Mexican Spider Monkey, is a subspecies of Geoffroy's Spider Monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Mexico and Central America, native to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Colombian Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

The Colombian Spider Monkey, is a subspecies of the Black-headed Spider Monkey, a type of New World monkey, found in Colombia and Panama. Some authorities, such as Froelich (1991), Collins and Dubach (2001) and Nieves (2005), do not recognize the Black-headed Spider Monkey as a distinct species and so treat the Colombian Spider Monkey as a subspecies of Geoffroy's Spider Monkey.

The Colombian Spider Monkey lives in dry forests, humid forests and cloud forests, and can live up to 2,000 to 2,500 metres (6,600 to 8,200 ft) above sea level. It is entirely black with some white on its chin while the Brown-headed Spider Monkey (A. f. fusciceps) has a black or brown body and a brown head.

The spider monkey has a black body and long limbs with thumb-less hands. It has a prehensile and extremely flexible tail, which acts as an extra limb. The tail has a hairless patch on the tip that is used for grip. This hairless patch is unique in its markings, just like the human fingerprint. Colombian spider monkeys can weigh up to 9.1 kg (20 pounds). Fruit makes up 80% of the spider monkey's diet, which also includes leaves, nuts, seeds, bark, insects, and flowers. This monkey lives approximately 24 years.

Spider monkeys are found in social groups of up to 30 individuals; however, they are usually broken up into smaller foraging groups of 3-4 individuals. They move and climb through the forest by hand over hand (brachiation) motion.

Spider monkeys fill an important ecological role in South America. These primates often feed on an assortment of fruits and as they travel throughout their environment. As they go, they disperse undigested seeds in their manure within 2-3 hours. The seeds soon sprout to replenish the vegetation that sustains South America's rich rainforests.

Black-headed Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

The Black-headed Spider Monkey, Ateles fusciceps, is a species of spider monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Central and South America. It is found in Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.^[2] Although primatologists such as Colin Groves (1989) follow Kellogg and Goldman (1944) in treating A. fusciceps as a separate species, other authors, including Froelich (1991), Collins and Dubach (2001) and Nieves (2005) treat it as a subspecies of Geoffroy's Spider Monkey.

The Black-headed Spider Monkey is arboreal and diurnal. It moves by climbing and brachiation. When mating, females may consort with a male for up to three days, or else mate with several males. Mating occurs with the male and female face to face, and can last for 5 to 10 minutes. The gestation period is between 226 and 232 days. The infant rides on its mother's back for 16 weeks, and is weaned at 20 months. Females attain sexual maturity at 51 months; males at 56 months. Females give birth every three years.

The Black-headed Spider Monkey is considered to be critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to an estimated population loss of more than 80% over 45 years, from hunting and human encroachment on its range of habitation.

Captive Black-headed Spider Monkeys have been known to live more than 24 years.

Brown Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

The Brown Spider Monkey, Ateles hybridus, is a species of spider monkey, a type of New World monkey, from South America. It is found in Colombia and Venezuela. Like all spider monkeys, it has very long, spindly limbs and a lengthy prehensile tail which can almost be called a fifth limb. The tail is made up of highly flexible, hairless tips with skin grooves which improves grip on tree branches and is adapted to its strictly arboreal lifestyle. It is currently critically endangered, with few examples of them remaining in the wild.

Analogous structure

The Brown Spider Monkey has many different features. One specific feature it has that is analogous with many other species would be its tail. Species that the Brown Monkey is not related to but yet share the common feature of the tail would be cats, dogs, giraffe, elephant, kangaroos etc. The difference is the Brown Spider Monkey uses the tail as an extra limb as it is very flexible.

Homologous structure

A homologous structure which Brown Monkeys share with other closely related species is their hands. They contain increased thumb mobility which allows primates to manipulate objects (they also contain fingers). This allows them to be able to do activities such as search for fleas on their offspring and siblings, eat and pick at their food etc.

Phylogeny

The species Brown Spider Monkey is very closely related to the woodley monkey but also related to the howler, uakaris sakis, plus plenty more. These all come under the catagorie New World Monkeys (platyrrhines).

White-fronted Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

The White-fronted Spider Monkey or Long-haired Spider Monkey (Ateles belzebuth) is a species of spider monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. They live in groups of 20 to 40 individuals, splitting into small parties of 1 to 9 when in activity.

Red-faced Spider Monkey

2010-01-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

The Red-faced Spider Monkey, Guiana Spider Monkey, or Red-faced Black Spider Monkey, Ateles paniscus, is a species of spider monkey found in northern South America.

Description

The head-body length of the Red-faced Spider Monkey is 40-50 cm (female) and 45 cm (male). The tail length is 80-88 cm (female) and 82 cm (male). Weight is approx. 7.0 kg. The black spider monkey is characterized by a glossy black coat, a black face, and sometimes a pink muzzle.

Spider monkeys, in general, have prehensile (capable of grasping) tails. Their fingers and limbs are long, agile and strong. There is no other monkey that can rival the strength of the spider monkey's tail or the length of their limbs.

Behaviour

The Red-faced Spider Monkey feeds on a variety of foods and would be considered an omnivore. It will eat termites and grubs but also feeds on supple leaves, flowers, berries, and fruit. In zoos worldwide, they specifically like oak leaves, cabbage, and lettuce leaves.

Typically, these monkeys will live in big territorial groups that can cover 370-570 acres of land. Sub-groupings will branch out and forage for food. At dusk they will re-congregate using a greeting call as a means of communication. At night they will often sleep in large groups called bands. Bands typically consist of several females, with their respective young, along with a few males for protection.

It lives in groups of about 20 individuals, splitting into small units of 2 to 5 when foraging.

The life cycle of the spider monkey consists of gestation (7-8 months), 6-11 years before sexual maturity, and an overall life span of up to 30 years.

The Red-faced Spider Monkey gets along well with the Black-handed Spider Monkey, a similar species. It also has been known to get along well with Cotton-top Tamarins as a playmate.

Distribution

The Red-faced Spider Monkey is found from Brazil to Guyana and French Guiana. The Red-faced Spider Monkey is protected only in the Amazon under the Amazon Animal Protection Act of 1973, and is listed by the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable.

Black Howler

2010-01-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Black Howler Monkey is a species of howler monkey, a large New World monkey, from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, being the southernmost member of the Alouatta genus. Only the male is black; females are overall pale buff.

Description

It lives in groups of 3 to 19 individuals (usually 7 to 9). There are usually 1-3 males for every 7-9 females in a group. When mating, males and females within a single group pair off.

Named for their vocalizations, they may be heard most often around sunrise. This "dawn chorus" sounds much more like roaring that howling, and it announces the howlers' position as a means to avoiding conflict with other groups. The call can be heard up to 5 km away.

These monkeys commonly sleep or rest up to 80% of the day, making it one of the least active monkeys in the New World. Their habitat is forest where they eat mostly leaves, but also will eat the occasional fruit, such as figs. They generally prefer walking and climbing to running or leaping. The prehensile tail is very strong and acts as a fifth limb, allowing the monkeys greater versatility when climbing and allowing them greater safety in the occasional fall from a high branch.

Because their limb structure makes terrestrial movement awkward, they spend most of their time in the trees and only come down for water during dry spells. Otherwise the monkeys drink by wetting their hand on a moist leaf and then licking the water of their hand. Their lifespan is up to 20 years, but more commonly 15 years in the wild.they are knowed for their loud howls that they do in in the morning and night

Red Howler Monkey

2010-01-10T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Red Howler Monkey is a South American species of howler monkey, a type of New World monkey. It is found in the western Amazon Basin in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. The population in the Santa Cruz Department in Bolivia was split off as a separate species, the Bolivian Red Howler, in 1985, and more recently it has been recommended splitting off the population in north-eastern South America and Trinidad as the Guyanan Red Howler. Red howler monkeys belong to the family Atelidae and the infraorder Platyrrhini (New World monkeys.

Description

There is little sexual dimorphism. The males range from 49-72 cm and females from 46-57 cm long. The males weigh between 5.4-9 kg, while females are 4.2-7 kg. It has a long prehensile tail of approximately 49-75 cm. The tail is covered with fur except for the last third underside of the tail, which allows it to grab branches. The color of both males and females is a deep reddish-brown, and the color shade changes with age. Their faces are surrounded by fur and they have stubby noses.

The jawbone of the red howler monkey is large, especially the body of the mandible. The position of the foramen magnum is very posterior in the howler monkey, making way for the expanded jaw and enflated hyoid bone. Howler monkeys also have an inflated bulla, which is the bony encasement of the middle ear. This makes them an exception among other New World monkeys.

Alouatta seniculus in arboreal and diurnal primate that spends much of its time up high in the canopy. Its preferred method of locomotion is quadrupedal walking with minimal leaping. Their long, prehensile tails also assist them with this by providing both support and grasping abilities. In addition, their hands and feet have a grasping pattern that allows them to better move about in the trees. This can be seen in their hands by the wide separation of the second and third digits.

Social interactions

It lives in groups of 3 to 9 individuals (usually 5 to 7). The groups are polygynous with only one or two males and the rest females and their offspring. One male is the usually dominant monkey of the group, and he is responsible for leading them to new food sites and defending them. The females of the group are in charge of the offspring. Venezuelan Red Howlers are most active in the morning; this is when the group is on the move to find another feeding spot. The howlers are famous for their “dawn chorus”. These sounds are roaring and howling calls that are performed mostly by the males in the group. The roars can be heard up to 5 km away in the forest, and makes their presence known in the area. This is also used to prevent confrontations between groups, which will prevent energy loss by avoiding physical fighting. Because of their low-sugar diets, conservation of energy is key to their day. The calls also help in the scattering of the groups and lessens the competition over food.

Diet and dentition

Howler monkeys are folivores which means that their diet mainly consists of leaves, but they also rely on nuts, small animals, fruits, seeds, and flowers for important sources of nutrition. These foods provide sugar necessary for growth and energy for the monkeys. The most important part of their diet are leaves, which they can’t live without for more than a week. They eat both older and younger leaves; however, the older leaves provide more nutrition. The howler monkeys are able to eat their largely leafy diet of fibrous leaves due to the structural aspects of their dentition. Narrow incisors aid in the ingestion of the leaves, and molars with sharp, shearing crests help them to better chew their food. In addition, they have a complex stomach that aids in the digestive process. Their hindgut and large intestine also help with digestion.The hindgut contains bacteria that digest leaves and makes up a third of the Venezuelan Red Howler’s total body volume.

Like other New World monkeys, the red howler monkey's dental formula (maxilla and mandible) is as follows: 2 Incisors, 1 Canine, 3 Premolars, 3 Molars.

Reproduction

There is fierce sexual competition between males due to an unbalanced sex ratio. The females attract males by moving their tongue around in order to initiate mating. If the male does not respond, she moves on to another mate. The average gestation period is 190 days. The infant will stay with the mother for 18-24 months. After males reach sexual maturity they are expelled from their natal group. The male must then invade a foreign group. There, the male kills off the other leader and whatever offspring the first leader generated. By doing this, the male is killing any possible competition. Less than 25% of offspring survive male invasions.

Brown Howler

2010-01-10T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Brown Howler Monkey, also known as Brown Howling Monkey is a species of howler monkey, a type of New World monkey, that lives in Argentina and Brazil. It lives in groups of 2 to 11 individuals.

Guatemalan Black Howler

2010-01-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

The Guatemalan Black Howler, or Yucatan Black Howler, (Alouatta pigra) is a species of howler monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Central America. It is found in Belize, Guatemala and Mexico, in and near the Yucatan Peninsula. It lives in evergreen, semi-deciduous and lowland rain forests. It is also known as the Baboon in Belize, although it is not closely related to the baboons that live in Africa. It is commonly seen at the Community Baboon Sanctuary and the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize, and also at various archeological sites over its range.

Description

The Guatemalan Black Howler is the largest of the howler monkey species and one of the largest of the New World Monkeys. Guatemalan Black Howler males are larger than those of any other Central American monkey species. On average, males weigh 11.4 kg (25 lb) and females weigh 6.4 kg (14 lb). The body is between 521 and 639 mm (20.5 and 25.2 in) in length, excluding tail. The tail is between 590 and 690 mm (23 and 27 in) long. Adults of both sexes have long, black hair and a prehensile tail, while infants have brown fur. Males over 4 months old have a white scrotum.

The Guatemalan Black Howler shares several adaptations with other species of howler monkey that allow it to pursue a folivorous diet, that is a diet with a large component of leaves. Its molars have high shearing crests, to help it eat the leaves, and males have an enlarged hyoid bone near the vocal chords. This hyoid bone amplifies the male Mantled Howler's calls, allowing it to locate other males without expending much energy, which is important since leaves are a low-energy food. Howling occurs primarily at dawn and at dusk.

The Guatemalan Black Howler is diurnal and arboreal. It lives in groups that generally contain one or two adult males, with a ratio of about 1.3 females for every male. Groups generally have between two and 10 members, including juveniles, but groups as large as 16 members have been studied. The home range is between 3 and 25 hectares. Population density can exceed 250 monkeys per square kilometer in the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Belize.

The Guatemalan Black Howler's diet includes mostly leaves and fruit. Flowers also make up a small part of the diet. The breadnut tree can provide as much as 86% of the monkey's diet during some seasons.

As with other howler monkey species, the majority of the Guatemalan Black Howler's day is spent resting. Eating makes up about a quarter of the day, moving about 10% of the day, and the remainder of the day is spent in socializing and other activities.

Females reach sexual maturity at four years, and males reach sexual maturity between six and eight years. Males leave their natal group upon reaching sexual maturity, but females generally remain with their natal group. They can live up to 20 years.

Conservation status

The species is considered to be endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because it is believed that the species population will decline by up to 60% over the next 30 years. Threats to the species include habitat loss, hunting, and capture as pets.

The Guatemalan Black Howler belongs to the New World monkey family Atelidae, which contains howler monkeys, spider monkeys, woolly monkeys and muriquis. It is a member of the howler monkey genus Alouatta. No subspecies are recognized.

Sympatry

The Guatemalan Black Howler is sympatric with the Mantled Howler along the edges of its range in Mexico and Guatemala near the Yucatan Peninsula. One theory for how this sympatry occurred and why the Guatemalan Black Howler has such a restricted range is that the ancestors of the Guatemalan Black Howler and the Central American Squirrel Monkey migrated to Central America from South America during the late Miocene or Pliocene. However, passage through the isthmus of Panama later closed due to rising oceans, and later opened up to another wave of migration about 2 million years ago. These later migrants, ancestors to modern populations of White-headed Capuchins, Mantled Howlers and Geoffroy's Spider Monkeys, out-competed the earlier migrants, leading to the restricted range of the Guatemalan Black Howler (and the Central American Squirrel Monkey).

Golden-mantled Howler

2010-01-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

The Golden-mantled Howler Monkey is a subspecies of the Mantled Howler Monkey, A. palliata. It ranges throughout much of Central America, in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and possibly Panama. The range limits between the Golden-mantled Howler Monkey and the Ecuadorian Mantled Howler Monkey are not entirely clear. The Ecuadorian Mantled Howler replaces the Golden-mantled Howler in either extreme eastern Costa Rica or western Panama.The Golden-mantled Howler differs from the Ecuadorian Mantled Howler primarily by being darker, with a mantle that is more rufous than yellowish. The Golden-mantled Howler Monkey differs from the Mexican Howler Monkey primarily in aspects of skull morphology.

Coppery Titi

2010-01-10T04:42:00.001-08:00

The Coppery Titi, is a species of titi, a type of New World monkey, from South America. It if found in Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Black-fronted Titi

2010-01-10T04:40:00.000-08:00

The Black-fronted Titi, is a species of titi, a type of New World monkey, endemic to Brazil.

Red-bellied Titi

2010-01-10T04:37:00.000-08:00

The Red-bellied Titi or Dusky Titi, Callicebus moloch, is a species of titi, a type of New World monkey, endemic to Brazil.

White-eared Titi

2010-01-10T04:36:00.001-08:00

The White-eared Titi, also known as the Bolivian Titi or Bolivian Gray Titi, is a species of titi, a type of New World monkey, from South America. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.

It is known for entwining its tail with another when a pair are sitting together.

Bald Uakari

2010-01-10T04:32:00.000-08:00

The Bald Uakari is a small New World monkey with a very short tail, red face, a bald head, and long coat. It generally weighs less than 9 pounds and is anywhere from about 20 to 23 inches in length.

Threats to Survival / Conservation Threats

The conservation status of this species was changed from near threatened to vulnerable in the 2008 World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List because the species has declined at least 30% over the past 30 years (three generations) due to hunting and habitat loss. This is considerably better than the 1994 assessment which found them to be endangered, followed by the 2003 assessment which found the species to be near threatened. Although the conservation status has improved, actual population numbers are on a decreasing trend. Since these particular primates live only in white water flooded forests, they are very susceptible to human impact (ie: land acquisition for agriculture and/or pastures).

Forest loss and hunting are the two most prominent threats to Cacajao calvus. Between 1980 and 1990 it was found that an average of 15.4 million hectares of tropical forests were destroyed each year and the Neotropics are facing forest loss in areas such as the Southern and Eastern parts of the Amazonia. In 1997 the Amazon Basin experienced the highest rate of forest destruction of the remaining tropical rainforests worldwide. Logging of hardwoods is a major contributor to overall destruction as large-scale logging disrupts the continuity of forest canopies. Canopy disruption and forest loss directly affects uakaris because of their arboreal lifestyle and adaptations for seed food consumption. Additionally, Cacajao calvus populations are located so close to the Amazon River, there is a higher risk of human hunting from canoes and such to use the primates as a food source or bait.

Conservation

In 1999, the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rainforest, set forth by the World Bank, aimed to place a total of 350 million dollars from Germany, Britain, and other major industrialized communities into conservation programs for the Amazon. Conservation efforts have also been initiated by Wildlife Conservation Society representatives working in South America. The Amazon-Andes Conservation Program (AACP) was established in 2003 in order to protect a set of seven landscapes in the Amazon. These protected landscapes account for approximately three percent of the Amazon Basin. The Wildlife Conservation Society is planning on expanding to more landscapes in the near future. Along with the AACP, Brazil’s national environment agency, the Instituto Brasileiro do Meioambiente e dos Recursos Naturis Renovaveis (IBAMA) is gaining help from the army to patrol the Amazon for acts of illegal logging, mining, and deforestation.

Rio Tapajos Saki

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The Rio Tapajós Saki is a species of saki monkey, a type of New World monkey, from South America. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru.

Monk Saki

2010-01-10T04:22:00.000-08:00

The Monk Saki, is a species of saki monkey, a type of New World monkey, from South America. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It can grow up to be 37-48 cm long and weigh about 1.5-3 kilograms, approximately the same as a large rabbit. The tail can be up to 40 or 50 centimeters long. It usually lives in groups of three of four in the canopy, and is very shy. It has coarse fur, and was almost hunted to extinction in the late 1900's.

White-faced Saki

2010-01-10T00:35:00.000-08:00

The White-faced Saki, also known as the Guianan Saki and the Golden-faced Saki, is a species of saki monkey, a type of New World monkey, found in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela. This species lives in the understory and lower canopy of the forest, feeding mostly on fruits, but also eating nuts, seeds, and insects.

There are two recognized subspecies of this monkey:

Pithecia pithecia pithecia
Pithecia pithecia chrysocephala

Reproductive Biology

In captivity, female White-faced Sakis experience ovarian cycles of approximately 17 days, and a gestational period of 20-21 weeks. Following birth, the mother undergoes a period of lactationally-induced fertility lasting 23 weeks, on average.

Sakis of the Pithecia pithecia species display noticeable sexual dimorphism in their coloration. Females have shorter hair than males, with brownish-grey fur and white or pale brown stripes around the corners of the nose and mouth. Males, on the other hand, have blacker fur, with a reddish-white forehead, face, and throat

Sunda Loris

2010-01-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

The Sunda Slow Loris is one of three of slow loris, native to Southeast Asia. This slow moving strepsirrhine primate has large eyes that point forward, and ears that are small and nearly hidden in the fur. Its tail is a mere stump. They tend to be smaller than other Loris, for instance N. bengalensis, but larger than N. pygmaeus. The Sunda Loris is a diurnal and arboreal animal that prefers the tops of the trees. Its scientific name derives from Kukang, its common name in Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia. They are also commonly known as Malu-malu ("shy Kuskus", from the erroneous association with the Kuskus species). In Indonesia they are sometimes called "Bukang" or "Kalamasan". In Malaysia they are sometimes known as "Kongkang" or "Kera Duku" (Kera, macaque; Duku, fruit). In Borneo, they are called Tandaiandong (Dusun) or sesir (Sennah).

Range and habitat

Sunda Loris inhabit orchards, plantations, bamboo forests and also tropical rain forests in parts of the Malaysian peninsula, Thailand, and Java and Borneo islands in Indonesia.^[4]^[6] There is also a population on N.c. menagensis on the Philippine Tawitawi Archipelago. N. c. coucang are found in Malaysia, Thailand, several Indonesian islands, and Singapore. N.c. menagensis is foundIdentification and behavior

Like other Slow lorises, N. coucang are arboreal and nocturnal primates, resting by day in the forks of trees, or in thick vegetation and feeding on fruit and insects by night. Unlike other Loris species, N. coucang remain in trees most of their lives: while N. bengalensis will often sleep on the ground, N. coucang sleep in a ball in branches or foliage. N. coucang prefer continuous canopy hardwood forests, but while found in similar forested surroundings, a 2007 report concluded that the exact habitats of N. javanicus and N. c. menagensis remain unknown.Adults live in overlapping ranges of 0.004 km² to 0.25 km². Apart from reproduction, N. coucang are largely solitary: one 1967 study recorded the most Slow Lorises ever seen together were six, and this was one female in estrus and five male suitors.

Diet

N. coucang consume tree sap, floral nectar, fruit, plant gums and arthropods.

Reproduction

Slow loris are polygamous and give birth to a single offspring with twins occurring rarely. Females reach puberty between the ages of 18 and 24 months, with males reaching puberty slightly earlier(Izard et al., 1988). Gestation period lasts between 180 days or 6 months. A single young is born (occasionally twins) after a gestation period. The young will remain with the mother for up to nine months while the males are territorial. The young have an expected lifespan about 12–14 years.

Threats

Slow Loris are threatened by loss of habitat as well as the pet trade. While trade in these animals is illegal, the slow moving Kukang can be found in pet markets in Indonesia and Brunei. Brunei authorities have a confiscation and rerelease program for animals found in markets at Tasek Merimbun Heritage Park

Red Slender Loris

2010-01-10T00:25:00.000-08:00

This small, slender primate is distinguished with large forward facing eyes used for precise depth perception, long slender limbs, a well developed index finger, the absence of tail, and large prominent ears, which are thin, rounded and hairless at the edges. The soft dense fur is reddish-brown color on the back and the underside is whitish-grey with a sprinkling of silver hair. Its body length on average is 7–10 in (180–250 mm), with an average weight of a mere 3–13 oz (85–370 g). This loris has a four way grip on each foot. The big toe opposes the other 4 toes for a pincer like grip on branches and food. It has a dark face mask with central pale stripe, much like the slow lorises.

Behavior

The Red Slender Loris favors lowland rainforests (up to 700 m in altitude), tropical rainforests and inter-monsoon forests of the south western wet-zone of Sri Lanka. Masmullah Proposed Forest Reserve harbors one of few remaining Red Slender Loris populations, and is considered a biodiversity hotspot. The most common plant species eaten was Humboldtia laurifolia, occurring at 676 trees/ha, with overall density at 1077 trees/ha. Humboldtia laurifolia is vulnerable and has a mutualistic relationship with ants, providing abundant food for lorises. Reports from the 1960s suggest that it once also occurred in the coastal zone, however it is now thought to be extinct there.

The Red Slender Loris differ from its close relative the Gray Slender Loris in its frequent use of rapid arboreal locomotion. It forms small social groups, containing adults of both sexes as well as young animals. This species is among the most social of the nocturnal primates. During daylight hours the animals sleep in groups in branch tangles, or curled up on a branch with their heads between their legs. The groups also undertake mutual grooming and play at wrestling. The adults typically hunt separately during the night. They are primarily insectivorous but also eat bird eggs, berries, leaves, buds and occasionally invertebrates as well as geckos and lizards. To maximize protein and nutrient uptake they consume every part of their prey, including the scales and bones. They make nests out of leaves or find hollows of trees or a similar secure place to live in.

Reproduction

Females are dominant. The female reaches her sexual maturity at 10 months and is receptive to the male twice a year. This species mates while hanging upside down from branches; individuals in captivity will not breed if no suitable branch is available. The gestation period is 166–169 days after which the female will bear 1–2 young which feed from her for 6–7 months. The lifespan of this species is believed to be around 15–18 years in the wild.

Threats

This slender loris is an endangered species. Habitat destruction is a major threat. It is widely trapped and killed for use in supposed remedies for eye diseases. Other threats include: electrocution on live wires, road accidents and the pet trade.

Conservation

The Red Slender Loris was identified as one of the top-10 "focal species" in 2007 by the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) project.

Gray-bellied Night Monkey

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The Gray-bellied Night Monkey, also called the Lemurine Owl Monkey, is a small New World monkey of the family Aotidae. Native to tropical and subtropical forests of South America and possibly Panama, the Gray-bellied Night Monkey faces a significant threat from hunting, harvesting for use in pharmaceutical research and habitat destruction.

Physical description

Like other members of their genus, this species is nocturnal; its small, round head is striped with black and is dominated by two large, brown eyes. The overall effect is not unlike an owl; the monkey's eyes shine a reddish orange by reflected light. Its white eyebrows are bushy, with a patch of darker fur between them. Its grey fur is described as dense and woolly, with the animal's underside being yellow to orange in colour. Its brownish black to orange tail is not prehensile and invariably tipped with black.

The Gray-bellied Night Monkey has slender limbs with long, delicate fingers; its fingertip pads are wide. Adults may attain a weight of 1.3 kilograms; there is no sexual dimorphism observed.

Habitat and diet

Found in both dry and moist areas, the Gray-bellied Night Monkey occupys all levels of the forest canopy; however, it is seldomly found on the ground. It prefers dense vegetation with tangles of vines where the trees are evenly dispersed. The Lemurine Owl Monkey's range is from Colombia and north-eastern Argentina to Ecuador and Panama; it is also found in the tropical Andes.

By day the monkey slumber in the cavities of trees or in dense thickets; by night, it searches the canopy for a variety of food items. Primarily a frugivore (fruit-eating), this monkey also eats vegetation, insects, nectar, and even other small mammals and birds when fruit is scarce.

Behaviour and reproduction

Most active during twilight hours and periods of bright moonlight, the Gray-bellied Night Monkey troop consists of a mated pair and their offspring, up to five individuals in total. This species is noted for the monogamous pair-bond it forms; parental duties are shared between the lead pair and the juveniles. However, it is the male who assumes the bulk of care giving and rearing responsibilities; the female serves only to nurse the infants. Remarkably, even if the male dies the female will refuse to take over from him.

Characteristically vociferous, the monkey produces a range of calls: from soft clicks and low-pitched guttural rumblings to owl-like hoots and high-pitched shrieks when threatened. When not feeding, the monkey is typically inactive. Like other members of its genus, the Gray-bellied Night Monkey claims a relatively small territory of about 0.1 km². Scent is central to this monkey's intraspecies communication; territories are marked with brown, oily secretions from the base of the tail.

Birthing peaks at the end of the dry season and in the midst of the wet season. Gestation averages 133 days, usually resulting in a single infant; twins are a rarity. There is only one litter per year. Sexual maturity is reached at 2.5 to 3.5 years of age, at which point the offspring disperse; that is, they leave the troop in search of an unattached mate.

Three-striped Night Monkey

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The Three-striped Night Monkey, also known as Northern Night Monkey or Northern Owl Monkey, is one of several species of owl monkeys currently recognised. It is found in Venezuela and north-central Brazil.

Until 1983, all the owl monkeys were regarded as subspecies of Aotus trivirgatus, and all were referred to as douroucoulis. The use of the name douroucouli exclusively for the Three-striped Night Monkey is not universally accepted; some authors use it for the entire genus, or for the grey-necked group of species within it (to which A. trivirgatus belongs).

Like other owl monkeys, the Three-striped Night Monkey lives in woodlands including rain forest. It is mainly black, with striking white markings on its face. Its body size is 27–48 cm, and its tail is about the same length again. Adults weigh up to 1 kg. It has very large eyes, and is most active on moonlit nights, feeding on fruit, nuts, leaves, insects and other small invertebrates, and birds' eggs. The Douroucouli forms pair bonds which are broken only by the death of one partner. It lives in family groups, with the immature young staying with their parents until sexual maturity at the age of 3 or 4. Normally only one infant is born, after a gestation period of a little over 4 months.

Black Lion Tamarin

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The Black Lion Tamarin also known as the Golden-rumped Lion Tamarin is a lion tamarin found only in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, almost exclusively at the Morro do Diabo State Park. It lives in secondary and primary forests along its restricted range.

The first zoo to breed this species was Jersey, and now they have sent their offspring to other European zoos. Bronx also keeps the species, as does São Paulo.

Golden-headed Lion Tamarin

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The Golden-headed Lion Tamarin is a lion tamarin endemic to Brazil. It is found only in the lowland and premontane tropical forest fragments in the state of Bahia, and therefore is considered to be an endangered species. They remain at heights of 3-10 meters. Their preferred habitat is within mature forest, but with habitat destruction this is not always the case. Several sources seem to have different information on the number of individuals within a group, and the type of social system that may be apparent. Golden headed lion tamarins live within group sizes ranging 2–11 individuals, on average it ranges 4–7. According to various sources, the group may consist of two adult males, one adult female, and any immature individuals, one male and one female and any immature individuals, or there may be one producing pair and a varying number of other group members, usually offspring from previous generations. There is not much known on their mating systems, but according to different sources, and information on the possible social groups, it can be assumed that some may practice monogamous mating systems, and some may practice polyandrous mating systems. Both males and females invest energy in caring for the young, and all members of the group also help with juvenile care.

Home range, behavior, and diet

Raboy & Dietz whom completed a study at Una Biological Reserve on diet and foraging patterns observed that golden headed Lion tamarins tend to defend large home ranges relative to their small body size, (ranging from 40-320 hectares). Their home ranges may be large in order to provide a sufficient amount of easily depletable fruit and prey foraging sites over the long term. On average they defended home ranges that are 123 hectares. Space is not necessarily used exclusively, and golden headed tamarin groups may occupy areas that overlap to some extent at their borders with other golden headed tamarin groups. The study showed that the wild golden headed lion tamarins spend about 50% of their time in only 11% of their home range. Their ranging patterns appear to be strongly influenced by resource acquisition and much less about territorial defense. The groups showed very few encounters with neighboring groups, but when it did occur, the encounters were always aggressive, and included intensive bouts of long-calling, chases, and fights between the different groups. GHLT’s spend much of their time foraging and traveling within their home range to the next foraging site. GHLT’s have a very wide diet; they eat plants, flowers, nectar, insects and small invertebrates; which include insect larvae, spiders, snails, frogs, lizards, bird eggs and small snakes. GHLT’s search for animal prey within epiphytic bromeliads; if their home range does not contain many bromeliads, then they also forage in crevices, holes in trees, between palm fronds and in leaf litter. They occasionally eat gum, but this behavior is rare in this species of tamarin. Since their habitat is fairly stable within the rainforest, their preferred food is available year round and they do not need to resort to the low nutritional value of exudates. Keep in mind that this study was completed at the biggest intact forest available to L. chrysomelas, so their behavior may change depending on the habitat and resources available. At a golden headed tamarin site in Lemos Maia, they showed an average home range of only 63 hectares, but they ranged in a patch of forest that was almost entirely discontinuous from the neighboring forests.

Conservation

The IUCN red list categorized the golden headed lion tamarin as endangered in 1982. According to Costa, Leite, Mendes, and Ditchfield, Brazil accounts for about 14% of the world’s biota and has the largest mammal diversity in the world, with more than 530 described species. According to the Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA), out of the 24 endemic primates of the Atlantic forest, 15 of them are threatened. Brazil’s Atlantic forest is one of the most endangered ecosystems on earth, in which the majority of the original forest has been cleared for farming, mining, ranching & expanding urban centers. The four species of lion tamarin have been studied and managed extensively, combining research on ecology, captive breeding, reintroduction and translocation, habitat restoration and protection, and environmental education.

Threats to survival

The forest of Bahia Brazil has been reduced to 2% due to farming, ranching, mining and urbanization. The Atlantic forest is highly fragmented, and the disappearance of this habitat is the main reason for the golden headed lion tamarin’s decline. The majority of the forest was once dominated by cocoa plants through a method known as cabruca. This is a system of shade cropping in which the middle and understory trees are removed and replaced with cocoa trees. Although the tamarin‘s habitat is reduced, it still leaves old growth trees which give the tamarins a place to forage and to sleep. In 1989 farmers abandoned their cocoa plants due to a fungus that attacked their harvest. The old growth which was once available abundantly to the tamarins was destroyed to harvest timber, clear land for cattle or grow other crops. The Atlantic forest is now a mosaic of primary and secondary forest, and agricultural lands.

Conservation efforts

In 1980 the Brazilian government created the Una Biological Reserve for the protection of the golden headed lion tamarin and its habitat. Over the years the park has been growing slowly as the government acquires more land. The population of L. chrysomelas at Una is the largest population in the most intact forest. There is also a captive breeding colony of 25 Golden Headed Tamarins at the Rio de Janeiro Primate Center. In the early 1990’s, the Landowner’s Environmental Protection Plan was created to educate the community about the importance of protecting the forest and the tamarin. The protection plan included conservation activities on over 70% of the neighboring farms, educating farmers on how to use sustainable agriculture in order to preserve the tamarin’s habitat. The plan also educates school children, hunters and forest guards on conservation, property rights and land use. This method of educating and involving the community has had great success for preserving the tamarin and their habitat. Kleiman and Mallinson summarize the conservation efforts that the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) have made in order to help all four of the tamarin species with their population decline. Between 1985 and 1991 IBAMA established four International Recovery and Management Committees(IRMCs). These IRMCs provide IBAMA with official guidance in the recovery efforts and management of the four species, and they are recognized by the government of Brazil as technical advisors. Public concerns of the tamarin species occurred in the 1960’s when Adelmar Coimbra-Fliho brought to the attention the rapid declines of the L. rosalia due to exportation and habitat destruction. His input helped with the establishment of the biological reserves to protect lion tamarins. He founded the Rio de Janeiro Primate Center and he was the first person to breed the golden headed lion tamarin. From 1983-1994 large numbers of golden headed lion tamarins were exported to Japan and Belgium as part of the exotic pet trade. IBAMA asked Jeremy Mallinson to form and become chair of an IRMC for the golden headed lion tamarin. The initial objective of the committee was to have all of the tamarins returned to Brazil, and some of them were returned. The committees promotes lion tamarins as a flag ship species with the ultimate intent being the preservation of the unique Atlantic rain forest, ecosystem and its many endemic plants and animal. The IRMC is divided into several tasks which include the captive management and research program, conservation and education program in Bahia, a Landowner’s Environmental Education Program, and a field study of ecology and behavior in the Federal Una Biological Reserve. They provide IBAMA with recommendations concerning demographic and genetic management, research proposals for wild and captive populations, community conservation education programs, expansion of protected areas through land acquisition, and they also lobby appropriate agencies to support new legislation. The IRMC members are international in composition with members from diverse disciplines, consisting of conservationists, field biologists, zoo biologists, educators, administrators, and IBAMA staff.

Golden Lion Tamarin

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The Golden Lion Tamarin also known as Golden Marmoset, is a small New World monkey of the family Callitrichidae. Native to the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil, the Golden Lion Tamarin is an endangered species with an estimated wild population of "more than 1,000 individuals" and a captive population maintained at approximately 490 individuals.

Physical characteristics

As its name would suggest, this lion tamarin is a reddish orange to golden brown in color. Its hair is longer and darker around the face, forming a mane on top of the head and on the cheeks and throat. Its limbs are slender yet capable with sharp claw-like nails (called tegulae), befitting its strictly arboreal life. Although quite long, its tail is not prehensile. The tail and forepaws of this monkey may have a black coloration. Its body may be up to 335 millimetres (13.2 in) long and its tail up to 400 millimetres (16 in). The male reaches a maximum weight of just 700 grams (25 oz) in the wild though higher weights can be found in captivity. The pregnant female may weigh up to 790 grams (28 oz) but a non-gestating female typically weighs closer to 550 grams (19 oz).

Behaviour and reproduction

The Golden Lion Tamarin is diurnal and primarily arboreal, forming small groups of up to fourteen individuals, led by a breeding pair; occasionally two unrelated males may be involved, but only one typically mates with the lead female. The group patrols a consistent territory of around 400,000 square metres (100 acres); fighting between groups is avoided by scent marking and "ritual encounters". By night, the tamarins sleep in abandoned nesting holes in trees, or in large bromeliads.

The group is cooperative in the rearing of young; however, only the dominant female usually breeds. The males are responsible for the bulk of rearing duties, with the mother nursing and providing transportation for the infant during its first week of life. Resources are shared among the group, as are predator surveillance duties. The young are well cared for until adolescence. Unlike other primates, both males and females leave the group; their rate of survival is low, as less than one quarter successfully integrate into a new group or establish themselves in an unoccupied territory.

Fully mature at 2-3 years, the Golden Lion Tamarin is able to breed at 18 months of age. The breeding season is from September to March. Gestation lasts for 126-136 days, usually ending in twin births; there may be up to two litters annually. The young tamarins are weaned after just 90 days; less than half of infants survive their first year of life. If they do, a lifespan of about 8 years can be expected. The oldest recorded tamarin died at the age of 31 at the San Antonio Zoo (TX) in 1999.

Distribution and habitat

Most of the wild population is confined to the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, a protected area of swampy forests in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is an important bastion of the Golden Lion Tamarin, as only 2% of forests in the monkey's original range remains. Furthermore, its existing habitat has been broken up by logging and agriculture; this has led to isolated populations and inbreeding, a combination likely to result in extinction.

A high canopy with dense tangles of vines is required by the Golden Lion Tamarin; other than providing a home, the labyrinthine forest affords some degree of protection from its many predators. Its main predators are raptors, large cats and snakes. The canopy also provides an important source of food; the omnivorous lion tamarins rely on rainwater and insects concentrated in the reservoirs of bromeliads and other small animals inhabiting the bark of trees. Fruit is also consumed; for instance at União Biological Reserve, more than 160 species of fruit were observed being eaten.

Conservation status

This species was first listed as endangered in 1982, rising to critically endangered in 1996. By 2003 the successful establishment of a new population at União Biological Reserve enabled downgrading the species to endangered, but the IUCN warns that extreme habitat fragmentation from deforestation means the wild population has little potential for any further expansion.

In an attempt to curb the Golden Lion Tamarin's precipitous decline, several conservation programmes have been undertaken. The intent is to strengthen the wild population and maintain a secure captive population in zoos worldwide. The survival rate of re-introduced animals has been encouraging, but destruction of unprotected habitat continues.

Geoffroy's Tamarin

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Geoffroy's Tamarin, also known as the Panamanian, Red-crested or Rufous-naped Tamarin, is a black and white tamarin with a reddish nape. It is found in Panama and Colombia. Some authors have treated it as a subspecies of the Cottontop Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) but the most recent research suggests that the two groups differ sufficiently to be considered separate species.

escription

In common with other callitrichides (tamarins and marmosets), Geoffroy's Tamarin is a small monkey, and the smallest Central American monkey. It has a length of between 225 and 240 millimetres (8.9 and 9.4 in), excluding the tail. The tail length is between 314 and 386 millimetres (12.4 and 15.2 in). Males have an average weight of 486 grams (17.1 oz), and females are slightly larger on average, with an average weight of 507 grams (17.9 oz). The fur on its back is variegated black and yellow, with pale legs, feet and chest. Its face is nearly bare, but the head has reddish fur with a triangle-shaped patch in the front of the head. The tail is chestnut-red and has a black tip.

Habitat

Geoffroy's Tamarin lives in various types of forest, including primary and secondary forest, and dry and moist tropical forest. It occurs in central and eastern Panama, with the range extending slightly west of the Panama Canal zone. It is less common on the Atlantic coast of Panama than the Pacific coast, and is only abundant on the Atlantic coast in areas near the Canal zone that have been modified by man. In Colombia, it occurs on the Pacific coast west of the Andes, south to the Rio San Juan. The eastern boundary of its range in Colombia was once thought to be the Rio Alrato, but has in recent years been reported further east, including the National Natural Park of Las Orquideas. Older sources sometimes report the species occurring in southern Costa Rica, but these reports are now generally believed to be erroneous

In Panama, it can be encountered by hikers in Metropolitan Park, an urban park within Panama City.

Behavior

Like all callitrichides, it is diurnal and arboreal. Unlike some other New World monkeys, it does come down to the ground occasionally. Group size is generally between three and nine monkeys, with three to five being most common. Groups show some degree of territorial defense. Population densities on Barro Colorado Island in Panama can range between 3.6 and 5.7 monkeys per square kilometer, but in other areas the population density can be as much as 20 to 30 monkeys per square kilometer. On average, Geoffroy's Tamarin ranges 2061 meters per day. Home range size varies between 9.4 hectares and 32 hectares.

Diet

Geoffroy's Tamarin has a varied diet that includes fruits, insects, exudates (gums and saps), and green plant parts. The diet varies seasonally. A study by Paul Garber estimated that the diet was made up of 40% insects, 38% fruit, 14% exudates (almost entirely from Anacardium excelsum cashew trees), and 8% other items. Another study, on Barro Colorado Island, showed 60% fruit, 30% insects and 10% green plant parts, including large amounts of Elephant Ear Tree (Enterolobium cyclocarpum) sap. Another study showed a diet about equally split between insects (mostly grasshoppers) and fruit. Unlike marmosets, tamarins do not have dentition adapted for gouging trees, so Geoffroy's Tamarin eats sap only when readily available. In one study, Geoffroy's Tamarin drank water from the corollas of Ochroma limonesis flowers. However, it is believed to also drink from tree holes, similar to other tamarin species.

Reproduction

Geoffroy's Tamarin can give birth throughout the year, but the birthing peak is from April to June. A single infant or twins can be born, although it is not uncommon for one of the twins to perish within the first few months. The gestation period is believed to be about 145 days, similar to the Cottontop Tamarin. The interbirth period ranges between 154 and 540 days, with an average of 311 days. The longer interbirth periods occur after twins. Infants weigh between 40 and 50 grams (1.4 and 1.8 oz) and are born fully furred. The infant's fur is colored differently than the parents'; the infant has black fur on the body and tail, with a beige blaze and white face.

As with other callitrichides, polyandrous and polygynous mating occurs, and males contribute heavily to parental care. Males carry and groom infants more than females do, but females clean the infant more than males do. Older siblings may also contribute to infant care, although infants prefer to be carried by their parents than their siblings. Infants become mobile at 2 to 5 weeks, and begin eating solid food at 4 to 7 weeks. They are independent at 10 to 18 weeks and are fully weaned at 15 to 25 weeks. Sexual maturity is attained at about 2 years, and it can live for up to 13 years.

Vocalization

A number of different vocalizations have been recorded for Geoffroy's Tamarin, including whistles, twitters, trills, loud or soft sharp notes, sneezes and long rasps.

Status

Geoffroy's Tamarin is classified as "Least Concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, in some localities the population may be declining due to habitat loss. It is also sometimes hunted and captured for the pet trade in Panama.

Taxonomy

Like the other tamarins and marmosets, Geoffroy's Tamarin is a New World monkey classified within the family Callitrichidae. It was previously included in the family Cebidae, which also includes capuchin monkeys and squirrel monkeys. It is a member the genus Saguinus, the genus containing most tamarins. There are no recognized subspecies.

Cottontop Tamarin

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The Cottontop Tamarin, also known as the Pinché Tamarin, is a small New World monkey weighing less than 1lb (0.5 kg). It is found in tropical forest edges and secondary forests where it is arboreal and diurnal.

Physical characteristics

This tamarin species has a long sagittal crest, white hairs from forehead to nape flowing over the shoulders ("Cottontop"). The back is brown, and the underparts, arms and legs are whitish-yellow. The rump and inner thighs are reddish-orange.

It is considered one of the bare-faced tamarins because of the lack of facial hair. Its lower canine teeth are longer than its incisors, so it seems as if it has small tusks. It is about the size of a squirrel and weighs 10-18 ounces. The males are only slightly larger than females. A medium Cottontop Tamarin weighs 432 g. Tamarins are among the smallest of the primates. Head body length of this species is 17 cm and tail length is 25 cm. Forelimbs are shorter than the hind limbs. The thumb is not opposable and the tail is not prehensile. All theLocomotion

It moves from tree to tree by running or walking quadrupedally along horizontal branches and leaping as much as three meters between branches. It moves with quick, jerky movements. It is very alert and active. Claw-like nails help it to grip branches, since its small size and non-opposable fingers make encircling difficult. Long limbs and a long tail make it suited for jumping.

Behaviour

The Cottontop Tamarin is most active between sunrise and sunset (diurnal), it spends a large portion of its activity time foraging for animal prey, searching through leaves and along branches, and peering and reaching into holes and crevices in branches and tree trunks. It sleeps in broad tree forks or cavities. When alarmed or excited, Cottontop Tamarins raise the hair on the crown of their head and stand up tall to make themselves look bigger.

Social systems

Groups of Cottontop Tamarins usually include 3–9 individuals. Group members are not necessarily all related. In addition to a dominant mated pair and their young, there may be transient individuals, probably young animals of both sexes. The home ranges of adjacent groups overlap. Research shows cottontops to be cooperative and pacifist to a surprising degree. All group members, even newcomers, take some part in carrying the young and giving them food morsels, particularly insects, and to the breeding female and infant carriers. The adult "helpers" gain experience in parenting by sharing in these tasks.

Like most tamarins, the Cottontop Tamarin usually gives birth to twins, although single births and triplets happen occasionally. Tamarins reproduce year round with a gestation of 183 days. Both parents care for the young. Males and juveniles usually carry the young, giving them to the females for nursing. The newborn have a coat of short hair and are helpless. Newborns are able to cling tightly to the body of the mother or father by using their hands and feet. The father carries the young, but transfers them to the mother at feeding time. Weaning begins at four to five weeks and youngsters reach sexual maturity at 12 to 15 months.

The Cottontop Tamarin will mark its territory with its scent by sliding its rear, or by rubbing the scent on the bottom of its feet. When coming into contact with other groups, instead of physical contact it will threaten the other group with the showing of its rear as a territorial display.

Diet

Its diet largely consists of insects, ripe fruit, seeds, nectar, and gum that has oozed out of trees. Other foods include some tender vegetation, spiders, small vertebrates, and bird's eggs. Mice, frogs, birds, and lizards are skillfully killed by a quick head bite, a learned behavior.

Communication

The Cottontop Tamarin vocalizes with birdlike whistles, soft chirping sounds, high-pitched trilling, and staccato calls. Researchers say its repertoire of 38 distinct sounds is unusually sophisticated, conforming to grammatical rules and able to express curiosity, fear, dismay, playfulness, warnings, joy, and calls to young. It has loud territorial songs as well as songs when it is excited. It moves its tongue across the lips. This may be a recognition signal, or could be used to communicate anger or curiosity. A "threat face" consists of lowering the forehead until it forms a bulge which almost covers the eyes; the lips are pushed forward and the head and neck crests are erected. This apparently is sufficient since no other body language is used.

Distribution and habitat

Up to the 1980s, the Cottontop Tamarin was thought to occur from Costa Rica south to northern Colombia. By 1992 it could be found only in northern Colombia. Significant exports for biomedical research contributed to the Cottontop Tamarin's decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Currently, deforestation is the greatest threat.

Conservation status

Life span in captivity has been as high as 25 years whereas life span in the wild is about 13–16 years. The wild population is estimated at about 6000, with 2000 adults. This species is endangered, having lost more than three-quarters of its original habitat to deforestation.Clearing of forest habitat by people is the main problem and populations also were depleted by taking them for the pet trade and for scientific research. They are now protected by international law; although they are numerous in captivity, they are still critically endangered in the wild.

Pied Tamarin

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Saquinus bicolor or more commonly known as the Pied Tamarian is a native of the Brazilian rainforest. S. bicolor is considered a neotropical endangered primate, a primate residing in Central or South American, mainly within the rainforest or Amazon region. More distinctively, S. bicolor is only found in the vicinity of Manaus, the capital city the Amazonas (Kutschera.). According to Kutschera, S. bicolor will stay within the vicinity of Manaus, due the interspecific competition with the Red-handed Tamarin. It has one of the smallest geographic ranges of all the Amazonian and Neotropical primates. Furthermore, it is also said that because of this interspecific competition, S.bicolor is gradually becoming displaced within its native habitat. The preferred habitat is relatively small. S. bicolor resides within constrained areas of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest (Dollinger et al. 2008). The Brazilian rainforest is best known for its beautiful, distinctive vegetation. Its canopy layer is where much of the biodiversity occurs. Residing within the Amazon are about 500 different types of mammalian species with more than half of these species being arboreal, as is the pied tamarin. Many of the plants and trees produce luscious fruits and flowers, making the tamarin an excellent frugivore. Being that the luscious fruits and flowers may contain small invertebrates; the tamarin is also known to digest a small amount of insects and other invertebrates (Price et al.). However, the tamarin is constricted to only the vicinity of Manaus, a capital city within the Amazon (Kutschera).

Threats to Survival / Conservation Threats

S. bicolor is critically endangered due to a variety of natural and human induced behavior. Habitat loss and degradation may be directly related to hunting and logging (Costa). According to the Institute of Environment in Brazil, human induced habitat loss and fragmentation are the major treats for land mammals, as well as arboreal mammals residing within the rainforest. However, one of the most critical factors of human induced habitat loss is due to the economically expanding city of Manaus. This economic development not only destroys the land aspect of a once freely, vegetated city, but has turned this luscious city into a developed urban area, filled with air and water pollution; due to human population densities increasing.

Its natural predators are small cats, birds of prey, and snakes. In urban setting main predators are domestic and feral cats and dogs. Due to the destruction of their natural habitat the species is at risk. However, the species also occurs in several protected areas.

Red-handed Tamarin

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The Red-handed Tamarin , also known as the Golden-handed Tamarin or Midas Tamarin, is a New World monkey named for the reddish hair on their feet and hands. It is native to the in wooded areas along the Amazon River in Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, and Venezuela.

They live in cooperative groups of 4 to 15 members with little competition among a group even between breeding males. Only one female among a group will breed during breeding season with the other females suppressing the instinct. The gestation period is 140–170 days and mothers typically give birth to two offspring

Young tamarins are cared for primarily by the father and turned over to the mother only to nurse, however the entire group helps with the care of the young.

Defense is a priority in a group, and when one tamarin is threatened the others will rush to its defense. The Red-handed Tamarin is territorial and can be aggressive, with sharp canines and claws instead of fingernails on all fingers and all but the large toe.

The Red-handed Tamarin is an exceptional climber and spends most of its time among the vines and branches of the trees. They are quick and agile and are superb jumpers known to jump distances of over 60 feet (18 m) from a tree to the ground with no sign of injury.

The tamarin's diet consists of fruit, flowers, insects, frogs, spiders, lizards, and nectar.

The Red-handed Tamarin's body measures 20.5–28 centimetres (8.1–11.0 in); including the tail they measure 31–44 centimetres (12–17 in). They weigh 400–550 grams (0.88–1.2 lb). Their life expectancy is approximately 10 years in the wild and 16 years in captivity.

Their natural predators are small cats, birds of prey, and snakes. Due to the destruction of their natural habitat the livelihood of the species is at risk.

Emperor Tamarin

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The Emperor Tamarin is a tamarin allegedly named for its resemblance to the German emperor Wilhelm II. It lives in the southwest Amazon Basin, in east Peru, north Bolivia and in the west Brazilian states of Acre and Amazonas.

The fur of the Emperor Tamarin is predominantly grey colored, with yellowish speckles on its chest. The hands and feet are black and the tail is brown. Outstanding is its long, white mustache, which extends to both sides beyond the shoulders. The animal reaches a length of 24 to 26 cm (9 1/2 to 10 1/4 in), plus a 35 cm (13 3/4 in) long tail. It weighs approximately 300 to 400 g (10 1/2 to 14 oz).

This primate inhabits tropical rain forests, living deep in the forest and also in open tree-covered areas. This diurnal species walks or runs quadrupedally through the forest, spending the majority of its days in the trees with quick, safe movements and broad jumps among the limbs.

The Emperor Tamarin lives together in groups of two to eight animals. The oldest female leads the group above several mature males. Mutual grooming plays an important role for bonding and socializing. The Emperor Tamarin is known to form mixed-species associations with the Brown-mantled Tamarin (Saguinus fuscicollis). It has various cries which help them to promptly recognize interlopers.

White-lipped Tamarin

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The White-lipped Tamarin, also known as the Red-bellied Tamarin, is a tamarin which lives in the Amazon area of Brazil and Bolivia.

The red belly of these New World monkeys is its most remarkable outward characteristic. Otherwise it is black with a thin white mustache on its face and a black-brown back.

They live in social groups of related animals. The mother usually gives birth to one or two young at a time. The father carries the babies most, but siblings (brothers and sisters) will also share the carrying of youngsters, and so learn how to be good carers.

Moustached Tamarin

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The Moustached Tamarin also known as Spix's Moustached Tamarin is a black tamarin with white nose, brownish back and white moustache.

The Moustached Tamarin is distributed in tropical forests of Brazil and Peru. Its diet consists mainly of fruits, tree gum and insects.

Black-mantled Tamarin

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The Black-mantled Tamarin, is a species of tamarin from South America. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Goeldi's Monkey

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Goeldi's Marmoset or Goeldi's Monkey is a small, South American New World monkey that lives in the upper Amazon Basin region of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. It is the only species classified in the genus Callimico, and the monkeys are sometimes referred to as "callimicos".

Goeldi's Marmosets are blackish or blackish-brown in color and the hair on their head and tail sometimes has red, white, or silverly brown highlights. Their bodies are about 8–9 inches (20–23 cm) long, and their tails are about 10–12 inches (25–30 cm) long.

Goeldi's Marmoset was first described in 1904, making Callimico one of the more recent monkey genera to be described. In older classification schemes it was sometimes placed in its own family Callimiconidae and sometimes along with the marmosets and tamarins in the subfamily Callitrichinae in the family Cebidae. More recently, Callitrichinae has been (re-)elevated to family status as Callitrichidae.

Females reach sexual maturity at 8.5 months, males at 16.5 months. The gestation period lasts from 140 to 180 days. Unlike other New World monkeys, they have the capacity to give birth twice a year. The mother carries a single baby monkey per pregnancy, whereas most other species in the family Callitrichidae usually give birth to twins. For the first 2-3 weeks the mother acts as the primary caregiver until the father takes over most of the responsibilities except for nursing. The infant is weaned after about 65 days. Females outnumber males by 2 to 1. The life expectancy in captivity is about 10 years.

Goeldi's Marmosets prefer to forage in dense scrubby undergrowth; perhaps because of this, they are rare, with groups living in separate patches of suitable habitat, separated by miles of unsuitable flora. In the wet season, their diet includes fruit, insects, spiders, lizards, frogs, and snakes. In the dry season, they feed on fungi, the only tropical primates known to depend on this source of food. They live in small social groups (approximately six individuals) that stay within a few feet of one another most of the time, staying in contact via high-pitched calls. They are also known to form polyspecific groups with tamarins, perhaps because Goeldi's Marmosets are not known to have the X-linked polymorphism which enables some individuals of other New World Monkey species to see in full tri-chromatic vision.

The species takes its name from its discoverer, the Swiss naturalist Emil August Goeldi.

Buffy-tufted Marmoset

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The Buffy-tufted Marmoset also known as the Buffy Tufted-ear Marmoset or White-eared Marmoset, is a New World monkey that lives in the forests on the Atlantic coast of southeast Brazil. Of all the marmosets, they have the southernmost range.

Buffy-tufted Marmoset resemble Common Marmosets but are somewhat larger. They have a grey-black skin, a touched tail and remarkable white ear-tufts which flop over more distinctly than the Common Marmoset's.

Buffy-tufted Marmoset live in the coastal forests up to a sea-level of 500 m. They are diurnal and arboreal, living almost all of their life in the trees. These animals live together in small groups of two to eight animals.

Unlike most other marmosets, Buffy-tufted Marmoset almost exclusively eat insects. They do not eat tree sap, which is why they have a very small snout.

Little is known about the Buffy-tufted Marmoset reproductive patterns. Gestation is approximately 170 days and births are typically of twin offspring.

White-headed Marmoset

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The White-headed Marmoset , also known as the Tufted-ear Marmoset or Geoffrey's Marmoset, is a marmoset endemic to Brazil.

One of the more common cebids in captivity, many zoos keep and breed the species. In fact, some zoos have to use methods of stopping their animals' breeding.

Wied's Marmoset

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Wied's Marmoset, also known as Wied's Black-tufted-ear Marmoset, is a New World monkey that lives in tropical and subtropical forests of southeastern Brazil. Unlike other marmosets, Wied's Marmoset lives in groups consisting of 4 or 5 females and 2 or 3 males (plus children). They are matriarchal, and only the dominant female is allowed to mate. Like other marmosets, the offspring are always born in pairs.

This monkey supplements its diet of sap with fruit, nectar, flowers and seeds, as well as spiders and insects. Since these are harvested from the middle and lower part of the forest, Wied's Marmoset often travels and forages in the company of the Golden-headed Lion Tamarin, which forages in the canopy.

Wied's Marmoset is eaten by birds of prey (the Harpy Eagle, the Gray Hawk, the Roadside Hawk and the White-tailed Hawk), felines (the Jaguar, Jaguarundi and Ocelot) and snakes.

Wied's Marmoset is highly social, spending much of its time grooming. It has individually distinctive calls, and it communicates through gestures and olfactory markings as well.

The coloring of Wied's Marmoset is mostly black, with white markings on cheeks and forehead. It has rings on its tail and black tufts of fur coming out of its ears.

Chimerism

It has been proven that a mutual exchange of germ cells often happens between the twins evolving in utero such producing so called chimeras - organisms containing two sets of cells stemming from two different zygotes - ova fertilized by two different sperms (possibly even produced by two different males). This implies that some tissues of a Wied's marmoset's body could come from a second ("minor") father.

At first researchers found the chimerism among the cells of the blood tissue, later, however, it has been proven that this phenomenon occurs in every type of tissue. The most interesting implication of this fact consists in the possibility that even a sperm or an ovum produced by an individual can stem from its sibling's germ cell - so an offspring of such an individual happens genetically to be its sibling's progeny.

Black-tufted Marmoset

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The Black-pencilled Marmoset, also known as the Black-tufted Marmoset and Mico-estrela in Portuguese, is a species of New World monkey that lives primarily in the Neo-tropical gallery forests of the Brazilian Central Plateau. It ranges from Bahia to Paraná,and as far inland as Goiás, between 14 and 25 degrees south of the equator. This marmoset typically resides in rainforests, living an arboreal life high in the trees, but below the canopy. They are only rarely spotted near the ground.

Physical description

The Black-pencilled Marmoset is characterized by black tufts of hair around their ears. It typically has some sparse white hairs on its face. It usually has a brown or black head and its limbs and upper body are gray, as well as its abdomen, while its rump and underside are usually black. Its tail is ringed with black and white and is not prehensile, but is used for balance. It does not have an opposable thumb and its nails tend to have a claw-like appearance. The Black-tufted Marmoset reaches a size of 19 to 22 cm and weighs up to 350 g.

Behavior

Diurnal and arboreal, the Black-pencilled Marmoset has a lifestyle very similar to other marmosets. It typically lives in family groups of 2 to 14. The groups usually consist of a reproductive couple and their offspring. Twins are very common among this species and the males, as well as juvenile offspring, often assist the female in the raising of the young.

Though the Black-pencilled Marmoset lives in small family groups, it is believed that they share their food source, sap trees, with other marmoset groups. Scent marking does occur within these groups, but it is believed that the marking is to deter other species rather than other Black-pencilled Marmoset groups, because other groups typically ignore these markings. They also appear to be migratory, often moving in relation to the wet or dry seasons, however, the extent of their migration is unknown.

Though communication between Black-pencilled Marmosets has not been studied thoroughly, it is believed that it communicates through vocalizations. It has known predator-specific cries and appears to vocalize frequently outside of predator cries.

Food and predation

The Black-pencilled Marmoset diet consists primarily of tree sap which it gets by nibbling the bark with its long lower incisors. In periods of drought, it will also include fruit and insects in its diet. In periods of serious drought it has also been known to eat small arthropods, molluscs, bird eggs, baby birds and small vertebrates.

Large birds of prey are the greatest threat to the Black-pencilled Marmoset, however, snakes and wild cats also pose a danger to them. Predator-specific vocalizations and visual scanning are its only anti-predation techniques.

Reproduction

The Black-pencilled Marmoset is monogamous and lives in family groups. It reproduces twice a year, producing 1 to 4 offspring, though they most often just twins. Its gestation period is 150 days and offspring are weaned after 8 weeks. There is considerable parental investment by this species, with both parents, as well as older juveniles, helping to raise the young. The offspring are extremely dependent on their parents and though they are sexually mature at 18 months, they typically do not mate until much later, staying with their family group until they do.

Common Marmoset

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Common Marmoset is a New World monkey. It originally lived on the Northeastern coast of Brazil, in the states of Piaui, Paraiba, Ceará, Pernambuco, Alagoas and Bahia. Through release (both intentional and unintentional) of captive individuals, it has expanded its range since the 1920s to Southeast Brazil (its first sighting in the wild for Rio de Janeiro was in 1929) and became there an invasive species, raising concerns about genetic pollution of similar species such as the Buffy-tufted Marmoset and predation upon bird nestlings and eggs.

Description

The fur of the Common Marmoset is grey. The most distinguishing characteristic is the white tufts of hair which surround the ears, which lend it another common name, the Cotton Eared Marmoset. A white mark is on the forehead and the muzzle is hairless. The long tail is grey-white. Common Marmoset adult size ranges from 14 cm (5.5 in) to 18 cm (7.1 in) and they weigh approximately 400 g (14 oz).

Habitat

Like all callitrichines, the Common Marmoset is diurnal. Its habitat ranges from the edge of forests into the deep forests, but it also appears in fields. It can run swiftly along the branches of trees and is also an excellent jumper. In its introduced range, can be found within cities, being common in Rio de Janeiro; is also found in Buenos Aires.

Diet

The diet of the Common Marmoset consists of insects, spiders, small vertebrates, bird eggs and tree sap or gum. They spend 25-30% of their time budget searching for food.

Behavior and reproduction

Common Marmosets live together in family groups of four to 15 animals, usually mated adults and their offspring. These groups inhabit territories of 300,000 m² (74 acres). The groups have a strict ranking, ordered by the dominance and aggressive behavior of the group leader.

Common Marmosets have variable mating systems: monogamous, polygynous and polyandrous. All adults and subadults share in the care of the young. After an approximately 150-day gestation, the female typically gives birth to twins, though up to four offspring have been observed in captive settings (larger litters suffer higher mortality rates). Compared to adults, the young animals are very large. Newborn twins together are 20 percent to 27 percent of the body weight of the mother, and it is assumed that the cooperative care of young helps counter some of the high costs of raising twin offspring. Males can mate after about one year, while females aren't fully mature until about 20 to 24 months.

Lifespan

The life expectancy of the Common Marmoset in the wild is about 10 years, although some living in captivity have lived to 16 years.

Black-tailed Marmoset

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The Black-tailed Marmoset is a New World monkey that lives in Brazil, south and east of the Amazon basin. Compared to other marmosets, they have a very isolated habitat.

The fur of the Black-tailed Marmoset is colored dark brown, with a striking white or yellow-white hip stripe extending down front and inner thigh, with a black tail. Remarkable is its naked, flesh-colored ears which stand out from the skin. They reach a size of 18 to 28 cm and weigh from 300 to 400 g.

Black-tailed Marmosets are diurnal and arboreal, using their claws to climb trees. Originally rain forest inhabitants, plantations have caused them to expanded them their range. They spend the night in tree hollows or in very close vegetation. They live together in small groups and mark their territory with scent glands, driving out intruders by shouting or by facial expressions (lowered brows and guarded lips).

The diet of the Black-tailed Marmoset predominantly consists of tree sap. To a lesser extent, they also eat bird eggs, fruits, insects, and small vertebrates.

After a 145 day gestation period, the female bears two (or rarely three) offspring. As is the case for many callitrichines, the father and the other group members take part with the raising of the offspring. Within six months the young are weaned, with full maturity coming at about two years of age.

Silvery Marmoset

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The Silvery Marmoset is a New World monkey that lives in Brazil, south and east of the Amazon basin. Compared to other marmosets, they have a very isolated habitat.

The fur of the Silvery Marmoset is colored whitish silver-grey except for a dark tail. Remarkable are its naked, flesh-colored ears which stand out from the skin. They reach a size of 18 to 28 cm and weigh from 300 to 400 g.

Silvery Marmosets are diurnal and arboreal, using their claws to climb trees. Originally rain forest inhabitants, plantations have caused them to expand their range. They spend the night in tree hollows or in very close vegetation. They live together in small groups and mark their territory with scent glands, driving out intruders by shouting or by facial expressions (lowered brows and guarded lips).

The diet of the Silvery Marmosets predominantly consists of tree sap. To a lesser extent, they also eat bird eggs, fruits, insects, and small vertebrates.

After a 145 day gestation period, the female bears two (or rarely three) offspring. As is the case for many callitrichids, the father and the other group members take part with the raising of the offspring. Within six months the young are weaned, with full maturity coming at about two years of age.

Pygmy Marmoset

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The Pygmy Marmoset, also known as Dwarf Monkey is a New World monkey native to the rainforest canopies of western Brazil, southeastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, and northern Bolivia. It is one of the smallest primates, and the smallest true monkey, with its body length ranging from 14-to-16-centimetre (5.5 to 6.3 in) (excluding the 15-to-20-centimetre (5.9 to 7.9 in) tail). Males weigh around 140 grams (4.9 oz), and females only 120 grams (4.2 oz).

Despite its name, the Pygmy Marmoset is somewhat different from the typical marmosets, most of which are classified in the genera Callithrix and Mico; as such, it is accorded its own genus, Cebuella.

Nicknames for this monkey often refer to its diminutiveness, as in the following two examples: mono de bolsillo ("pocket monkey") and leoncito ("little lion").

The Pygmy Marmoset has a tawny coat, and a ringed tail that can be as long as its body. In common with other callitrichids, it has claws instead of nails on all its digits except the big toe. It is omnivorous, feeding on fruit, leaves, insects, and sometimes even small reptiles. Its small weight allows it to reach the very highest leaves of a tree, and to exploit the otherwise little-used food sources there. Much of its diet, however, comes from tapping trees for sap. Up to two-thirds of its time is spent gouging tree bark to reach the gummy sap. The Pygmy Marmoset has specialized incisors for gouging holes in bark. Because of its small size, and its swift movements, it is very hard to observe in the wild.

The Pygmy Marmoset uses special types of communication to give alerts and warning to its family members. These include chemical, vocal, and physical types of communication. A trill to communicate over long distance. A sharp warning whistle and a clicking sound for signaling danger to their family members. A J-call is a series of fast notes repeated by the caller and is for medium distances.

There are two subspecies of the Pygmy Marmoset:

Cebuella pygmaea pygmaea
Cebuella pygmaea niveiventris

Pygmy Tarsier

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The Pygmy Tarsier, also known as the Mountain Tarsier or the Lesser Spectral Tarsier, is a nocturnal primate found on central Sulawesi, Indonesia, in an area with lower vegetative species diversity than the lowland tropical forests. The Pygmy Tarsier was believed to have become extinct in the early 20th century. Then, in 2000, Indonesian scientists accidentally killed one while trapping rats. The first Pygmy Tarsiers seen alive since the 1920s were found by a research team from Texas A&M University on Mount Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in August 2008. The two males and single female (a fourth escaped) were captured using nets, and were radio collared to track their movements. As the first live Pygmy Tarsiers seen in 80-plus years, these captures dispelled the belief among some primatologists that the species is extinct.

Physical description

The Pygmy Tarsier has a head-body length of 95 to 105 mm (about 4 inches), and weighs less than 57 grams (2 ounces). T. pumilus has very distinct morphological features, a body length which is smaller than other tarsier species, and a small body weight. It also has smaller ears than the rest of the genus, and its fur is tan or buff with predominant grey or brownish red coloring. The tail is heavily haired and ranges from 135 to 275 mm. The most noticeable feature of T. pumilus are its large eyes, about 16 mm in diameter. The Pygmy Tarsier also has nails on all five digits of each hand and on two digits of each foot. The claw-like nails aid in its grasping strength and are also used as an aid in its need for vertical support for feeding and movement.

Behavior

T. pumilus is found in stable bonded pairs, remaining together for up to 15 months. This stable pair bond is usually monogamous. The species has two breeding seasons, one at the beginning of the rainy season and the other at the end, separated by about 6 months. Gestation lasts 178 days on average, and births occur in May and from November to December. Infants are quite precocial, and develop quickly, similar to other juveniles in the genus. The offspring begin capturing their own prey around 42 days of age, and travel in groups after only 23 days. Young females remain with parents until adulthood, while young males leave the natal group as juveniles.

The Pygmy Tarsier is nocturnal or crepuscular, and is mainly arboreal. It spends most of the daylight hours sleeping on vertical branches in the canopy. T. pumilus is not a nest builder. Unlike other tarsier species, it does not use scent glands to mark territorial boundaries. Also, tactile communication and interaction is important with the Pygmy Tarsier, as in other tarsier species.

Diet

Tarsiers, in general, are insectivorous, and tarsiers are the only primates that are completely carnivorous. They eat arthropods, and there are anecdotal stories of T. pumilus capturing birds and snakes. As insectivores, they also play an integral role in their habitat in structuring the insect community and in the local food webs.

Spectral Tarsier

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The Spectral Tarsier is apparently less specialized than the Philippine Tarsier or Horsfield's Tarsier; for example, it lacks adhesive toes. It is the type species for the Tarsius genus. It is found in Indonesia, primarily in the lowlands of Sulawesi and on Selayar Island.

The Spectral Tarsier has the largest eye to body size ratio of all of the mammals.

Weighs about 80-100 grams and has a body length of 16cm and a tail length of 23cm. They can live up to 12 years. Males are bigger then females.

Spectral Tarsiers are the only totally canivorous primates. They have remained largely unchanged for 40 million years.

Horsfield's Tarsier

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Horsfield's Tarsier, also known as the Western Tarsier, is a species of tarsier.

Distributions

T.bancanus are found in Southern Sumatra, Borneo and nearby islands^[22]. Bornean tarsier, T.b. borneanus known from many lowland sites in Sabah, Brunei, Sarawak and West Kalimantan and above 900m in the Kelabit uplands in Northern Sarawak. Other records that had been made only from Kutai and Peleben in East Kalimantan and Tanjung Maruwe in Central Kalimantan.

Habitat

This species can live in both primary and secondary forests, and it also lives in forests along the coasts or on the edge of plantations.

Conservation status

The habitat loss rapidly due to forest conversion, oil palm plantations, fire and logging. Even the species are collected for the illegal pet trade and wrongly considered a pest to agricultural crops, and can suffer, directly and indirectly, from contamination from agricultural pesticides.

Horsefield’s tarsier is listed as Vulnerable in 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and protected by law in Indonesia and in Malaysia, and is listed in CITES Appendix II.

In February 2007, the governments of Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia agreed to protect roughly 220,000 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) of tropical forest in the so-called "Heart of Borneo". Environmental group WWF was particularly active in the establishment of the protected area.In the "Heart of Borneo" project, non governmental organizations have played role in promoting the critical Heart of Borneo initiative and in assisting the transboundary nations in its conceptualization, design, and implementation. The transboundary nations is to improve biodiversity conservation in Bornean production forests, and to ensure that such forests are not simply converted to agricultural land-uses such as oil-palm plantations after logging.

Philippine Tarsier

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The Philippine Tarsier, known locally as the Maumag in Cebuano/Visayan, is an endangered tarsier species endemic to the Philippines. It is found in the southeastern part of the archipelago, particularly in the islands of Bohol, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao. Its name is derived from its elongated "tarsus" or ankle bone.

Its geographic range also includes Maripipi Island, Siargao Island, Basilan Island and Dinagat Island. Tarsiers have also been reported in Sarangani, although they may be different subspecies. Being a member of a family that is about 45 million years old, it was only introduced to western biologists in the 18th century.

Range and distribution

The Philippine Tarsier, as its name suggests, is endemic to the Philippine archipelago. Tarsius syrichta populations are generally found in the southeastern part of the archipelago. Established populations are present particularly on the islands of Bohol, Samar, Leyte and Mindanao.They have also been found on various isolated islands within its known range, such as Maripipi Island, Siargao Island, Basilan Island and Dinagat Island.

Ecology and life history

Habitat

The Philippine Tarsier's habitat is the second growth, secondary forest, and primary forest from sea level to 700 m. Its habitat also includes tropical rainforest with dense vegetation and trees that offer it protection like tall grasses, bushes and bamboo shoots.

Research findings also show that the Philippine Tarsier prefer dense, low-level vegetation in secondary forests, with perching sites averaging 2 meters above the ground.

Home range

Initial studies show that the Philippine Tarsier appears to have a home range of 1 to 2 hectares. Recent research shows that home ranges averaged 6.45 hectares for males and 2.45 hectares for females (MCP and Kernel 95%), allowing for a density of 16 male and 41 female tarsiers per 100 ha.

Research findings also show that while both male and female tarsiers are solitary animals, they cross each other's paths under the cover of nightfall as they hunt for prey. They travel up to one and a half kilometres across the forest and the optimal area is more than six hectares.

Ecosystem roles

Besides human hunters, feral cats banished from nearby communities are the species' main predators, though some large birds are known to prey on it as well. Because of its nocturnal and arboreal habits, the Philippine Tarsier is most likely to fall prey to owls, or to small carnivores which it can encounter in its canopy homes.

Feeding ecology

The Philippine Tarsier is carnivorous. Primarily insectivorous, its diet consists of live insects and it has also been observed to feed on spiders, small crustaceans, and small vertebrates such as small lizards and birds. Tarsius syrichta preys on live insects, particularly crickets and grasshoppers. Upon seizing its prey, the tarsier carries it to its mouth using both hands.

As predators, the Philippine Tarsier may help to structure insect communities. To the extent that it is preyed upon by other animals, it may impact predator populations.

Behavior

The Philippine Tarsier is a shy nocturnal animal that leads a mostly hidden life, asleep during the day and only active to look for food during the night. During the day, it sleeps in dark hollows close to the ground, near the trunks of trees and shrubs deep in the impenetrable bushes and forests. They only become active at night, and even then, with their much better sight and amazing ability to maneuver around trees, are very well able to avoid humans.

It is arboreal and is a vertical clinger and leaper, habitually clinging vertically to trees and are capable of leaping from branch to branch.

The Philippine Tarsier is solitary. However, it is found to have either monogamous or polygamous mating system.

Communication

The Philippine Tarsier uses varied means of communication. Although less vocal than many primate species, it uses calls which are often associated with territorial maintenance and male-female spacing. Its "loud call" is a loud piercing single note. When content, it emits a sound similar to a soft sweet bird-like twill. And when several tarsiers come together, they have a chirping, locust-like sound.

Its vocal communication is the distress call made by infants when they are separated from their mothers. It is also the call made by males to their mates during mating season. Its olfactory communication is the marking of a scent from the circumoral gland which the female uses to mark her mate with the gland located around the mouth. It is also the marking of a male's territory with the use of urine. Its tactile communication is the social grooming done when one tarsier grooms the other, removing dead skin and parasites, observed in females on adult males, as well as in females on their offspring.

Life history

Reproduction

The Philippine Tarsier's pregnancy or gestation period lasts about 6 months. The female's estrous cycle lasts 25–28 days. Mating season begins in April to May. The males deposit a mating plug in the female's vagina after intercourse. The female gives birth to one offspring per gestation. The infant is born with a lot of hair and born with its eyes open. The females carry their infants in their mouth. A new born can already cling to branches and in less than a month after birth, it can start leaping.

The Philippine Tarsier reproduces poorly in captivity. the world's smallest monkey

Importance to humans

There is no known negative impact of the Philippine Tarsier on humans, just as long as it is in its native environment. However, when kept as pets, there is a possibility that the species may spread worms and other parasites to their human owners.

Tarsiers used to be kept as pets or sold for trade, although their survival in captivity is erratic due to their need for live insects upon which to feed. Scientists are interested in these animals because of their unique taxonomic position, and study of tarsiers may aid human economies.

Conservation

In 1986, the Philippines Tarsier was assessed as Endangered by the IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1986. It was still assessed as Endangered by the IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre in 1988, as well as in 1990 (IUCN 1990). In 1996, it was assessed as Lower Risk/conservation dependent by Baillie and Groombridge (1996).

On September 13, 1991, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), per DENR Administrative Order Number 48 or DAO 48, listed the Philippine Tarsier as an endangered species: species and subspecies of wildlife whose populations are in danger of extinction and whose survival is unlikely if the causal factors continue operating.

The Philippine Tarsier is listed in Appendix II of CITES, and the U.S. ESA classifies it as threatened.

In 2000, the IUCN, having continuously listed the Philippine Tarsier as endangered, further assessed the Tarsius syrichta in its red list category and criteria as Data Deficient (DD) which means that there is inadequate information to make a direct or indirect assessment of its risks of extinction based on its distribution and/or population status. Further, it basically means that it is not known how close the species is to extinction or if it is a lower risk.

Being classified as such, the sale and trade of the species is prohibited. In addition, research on the species, particularly those using invasive techniques, is controlled by the DENR Environment Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) and requires Environmental Compliance Certificate/Environmental Impact Statement or ECC/EIS.

Threats to the species

For the past 45 million years, tarsiers have inhabited rainforests around the world, but now they only exist on a few islands in the Philippines, Borneo and Indonesia. In Bohol, the Philippine Tarsier was a common sight in the southern part of the island until the 1960s. Since then, the number has dwindled to as few as an estimated 1000 still left in the wild. Once protected by the humid rainforests and mist-shrouded hills, these mysterious primates struggle to survive as their home is cleared for crop growing.

Due to the quickly growing human population, which causes more and more forests to be converted to farmland, housing areas and roads, the place where the Philippine Tarsier can live its secluded life is disappearing.

Along this line, the dwindling of Philippine forests has posed a grave and significant threat to the survival of the Philippine Tarsier because this results in the destruction of its natural forest habitat. Indiscriminate and illegal logging, cutting of trees for firewood, "kaingin" or slash and burn method of agriculture, urbanization patterns have encroached on the habitats of the tarsier, causing the tarsier to be threatened or endangered.

The unabated hunting of the species by humans for house pets or for trade has contributed to its decline as well. Hunting tarsiers to sell as pets was a thriving industry until recently. Because of its adorable and benign appearance, many have been lured to keep the Philippine Tarsier as pets. This demand fuels the capture and illegal trade of the animal further diminishing its remaining number. Moreover, the life span for wild tarsiers is 24 years, but often as little as 12 years in captivity. Aside from the issues of replicating a natural diet, climate, and exercise that may reduce a captive tarsier's lifespan, stress may be added by the fact that many human owners want to interact with and display their pets by day, interrupting their nocturnal lifestyle.

Paradoxically, indigenous superstition coupled with relatively thick rainforest, particularly in Sarangani province, have apparently preserved this endangered species. Indigenous tribes leave the Philippine Tarsiers in the wild because they fear that these animals could bring bad luck. One belief passed down from ancient times is that they are pets belonging to spirits dwelling in giant fig trees, known as belete trees. If someone harms a tarsier they need to apologize to the spirits of the forest, or it’s thought they will encounter sickness or hardship in life.

Crowned Sifaka

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The Crowned Sifaka is a sifaka endemic to Madagascar. It has a length of 87 to 102 centimeters, of which 47-57 centimeters are tail. The Crowned Sifaka lives in western Madagascar. It lives in dry deciduous forest. Its pelage is mostly creamy white, with head, neck and throat dark brown. Group size is between 2 and 8 individuals.

Van der Decken's Sifaka

2010-01-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

Van der Decken's Sifaka is a sifaka endemic to Madagascar. It has a length of 92 to 107 centimeters, of which 42-48 centimeters are tail. Van der Decken's Sifaka lives in western Madagascar. It lives in dry deciduous forest. Its pelage is usually creamy white, with tinges of yellow-gold, silver grey or pale brown on the neck, shoulders, back and limbs. The face is entirely black Group size is between 2 and 10 individuals, with groups of 3 to 6 most common.

Coquerel's Sifaka

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Coquerel's Sifaka is a medium-sized lemur of the sifaka genus Propithecus. Like all lemurs, it is endemic to Madagascar.

Description

Coquerel's Sifaka is a vertical clinger and leaper with long, powerful hind legs and an upright posture. It has a head-body length of 42-50 cm and a tail length of 50-60 cm. The total mature length (including tail) is approximately 93 to 110 cm. Adult body mass is typically around 4 kg. The dorsal pelage and tail are white, with maroon patches on the chest and portions of the limbs. The coat is generally dense. Its face is bare and black except for a distinctive patch of white fur along the bridge of the nose. Its naked ears are also black, and its eyes are yellow or orange.

Distribution

This species occurs only at altitudes of less than 300 ft in the dry deciduous forests of northwestern Madagascar, including coastal forests. It primarily occurs to the north and east of the Betsiboka River, and the southerly portion of the range extends to Ambato-Boéni.

Groups of this species have a home range area amounting to 4-9 hectares. Overall densities in the wild are observed in the range of 60 individuals per km².

Diet

Coquerel's Sifaka has an herbivorous diet that varies by season. In the wet season, it eats immature leaves, flowers, fruit, bark, and dead wood. In the dry season, it eats mature leaves and buds. It may browse nearly 100 different plant species, but the majority of its feeding time will be concentrated on about 10% of these.

Behaviour

Coquerel's Sifaka lives in matriarchal groups of about three to ten individuals. It is diurnal and primarily arboreal. Much is known about its behavior from observations both in the wild and in captivity.

Social Structure

Matriarchy is rare in the animal kingdom as a whole but common among lemurs. A matriarchal system is particularly pronounced in Coquerel's Sifaka. All adult and even most subadult females are dominant over males.

Females have preferential access to food and other resources. When a female is browsing a particular area or tree, a male must wait for her to finish before he moves there to feed himself. If he gets in the way of the female, she may lunge, smack at him, or bite him. The male then exhibits submissive behavior by rolling his tail between his legs, chattering softly, and baring his teeth in a grimace before quickly leaping out of her way.

When mating, Coquerel's Sifaka commonly practices polyandry. A female may choose to mate with only one male, but most often she will mate with several, from other visiting groups as well as from her own. Males compete for access to sexually receptive females. However, the winner of a fight will not necessarily be the one she selects to breed with. The criteria by which she chooses a mate are evidently more complex.

In some other animals, polyandrous mating is thought to raise the chances of successful fertilization, but this does not appear to be the case in Coquerel's Sifaka. Instead, polyandry is thought to be advantageous because when paternity is confused, the likelihood of male infanticide decreases.

Reproduction

Coquerel's Sifaka mates between January and March. Infants are born in June and July after a gestation period of about 162 days. An infant will cling to its mother's chest until about a month or so after birth, then transfer to her back. Infants are weaned and become fully independent by about six months of age. Adult size is reached in one year.

Locomotion

In the trees, Coquerel's Sifaka moves by vertical clinging and leaping. It maintains an upright posture when at rest or when propelling itself between branches or trunks. This style of arboreal locomotion is characteristic of most, if not all, lemurs.

Occasionally Coquerel's Sifaka will descend to the ground to cross open spaces. Its terrestrial locomotion is unique to its species. Like Verreaux's Sifaka, it moves in a series of bipedal hops with its arms thrown out to the sides for balance. However, whereas Verreaux's Sifaka bounds sideways and crosses its legs one in front of the other, the Coquerel's Sifaka bounds forward, like a kangaroo. It leans in the direction of its jump to achieve forward momentum.

Communication

Coquerel's Sifaka uses a variety of auditory, visual, and olfactory signals to communicate.

All sifakas are known for their characteristic "shih-fak" alarm call. The first syllable is a low growl that "bubbles" in the throat, and the second is a clicking sound like an amplified hiccup. The "shih-fak" call is used to warn fellow group members of a potential ground predator or to threaten enemies and intruders. Coquerel’s Sifaka is highly territorial.

Contact calls used when groups are traveling include soft grunts and growls. If a sifaka is separated from its group members, it may emit a long, loud wail to find them.

One visual signal which Coquerel’s Sifaka uses to communicate is a rapid backward jerking of the head. This is a threatening action which may accompany the "shih-fak" call.

Sifakas also rely heavily on scent for communication. Males typically scent-mark using a gland in their throats, which they will rub back and forth along branches. Females are more likely to scent-mark with anogenital glands. It is not entirely clear what information is conveyed in these scents, beyond the demarcation of territory.

Conservation status and threats

Though its populations are thought to be widely distributed, Coquerel's Sifaka is found in only two protected areas in Madagascar: the Ankarafantsika National Park and the Bora Special Reserve. It is an endangered species. The principal threats to its existence are deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and hunting pressure. In northwestern Madagascar, deforestation results from annual burning to create new pastureland for livestock. Trees are also cut for the production of charcoal.

Many local Malagasy traditions prohibit hunting of the Coquerel’s Sifaka. However, these protective taboos are breaking down with cultural erosion and immigration.

Even the protected areas in which the Coquerel’s Sifaka occurs offer it little protection. It is hunted even within Ankarafantsika, and the Bora Special Reserve has become seriously degraded.

Cultural references

The lemur upon whom Zoboomafoo (the eponymous PBS kids television program) is based is a coquerel's sifaka named Jovian currently captive at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Verreaux's Sifaka

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Verreaux's Sifaka is a medium sized primate in one of the lemur families, Indriidae. It lives in Madagascar and can be found in a variety of habitats from rainforest to western Madagascar dry deciduous forests and dry and spiny forests. The fur is thick and silky and generally white with brown on the sides, top of the head, and on the arms. Like all sifakas, it has a long tail that it uses as a balance when leaping from tree to tree. However, its body is so highly adapted to an arboreal existence that on the ground its only means of locomotion is hopping. The species lives in small troops which they forage for food with.

There are four sub species of this kind of lemur. There are many things unknown about Verreaux's Sifaka, so their life span in the wild has not been approximated, but in captivity they generally live to become up to 18 years old.

Diet

Verreaux's Sifaka forage for food in the troop it lives in, primarily in the morning and late afternoon, so they can rest during the hottest part of the day. They are herbivores and leaves, fruit, bark and flowers are typical components of the diet. However, they are mostly folivorous (leaves represent the majority of the diet over the year, especially in the dry season) and the seem to choose food items on the ground of quality (lower tannin content) than on the ground of availability.

Behaviour

They live in family groups, or troops, of 2-12, which may be just one male and female or multimale-multifemale. Group and population sex ratio can be more or less skewed toward males. Many groups seem to be effectively harem groups with a single dominant male unrelated with resident female(s). They have a home range of 2.8.5ha, and although they are territorial, it is the food source they will defend rather than the territory's boundaries, as often boundaries overlap. Females are dominant over males, forming a society using Matriarchy.

Females use anogenital secretion mainly for territory demarcation whereas males seem to use specialized secretions (via anogenital and throat glands) more for sexual "advertisement" than for territorial purposes.

Over the year males and females engage in a biological market, exchanging grooming for grooming (interchange) during the non mating period, and grooming ("offered" by males) for reproductive opportunities (sexual access "offered" by females) during the mating period. Recently, it has been discovered that sifaka dyads often engage in post-conflict reunions after aggressive episodes: reconciliation occurs more frequently when food is not involved and for low intensity aggressions.

They are diurnal and arboreal, and engage in sunbathing with outstretched arms and legs. Verreaux's sifaka move through the trees by clinging and leaping between vertical supports. They are capable of making remarkable leaps through the trees - distances of 9-10m are not uncommon. On the ground, they hop bipedally.

Reproduction

Females give birth to one infant after a gestation period of 130 days, between June and August. For the first 6–8 weeks, the infant clings to the mother's stomach, but for the following 19 weeks, it clings to her back.

Conservation status

Currently this species is considered to be Vulnerable by the IUCN.

Milne-Edwards' Sifaka

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Milne-Edwards' Sifaka is a large arboreal, diurnal lemur endemic to the eastern coastal rainforest of Madagascar. Milne-Edwards' Sifaka is characterized by a black body with a light-colored "saddle" on the lower part of its back. It is closely related to the Diademed Sifaka, and was until recently considered a subspecies of it. Like all sifakas, it is a primate in the family Indriidae.

Silky Sifaka

2010-01-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

The Silky Sifaka is a species of lemur found only in northeastern Madagascar. It is one of the rarest mammals on earth, and is listed as one of the world’s top 25 most critically endangered primates. It is estimated that there are less than 250 remaining mature individuals. They are only found within a few protected areas in the rainforests of north-eastern Madagascar in the Marojejy National Park, Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve, and the Makira Forest Protected Area. Silky Sifakas are the flag-ship species for these protected areas, particularly for Marojejy which has recently been inaugurated as part of a World Heritage Site Cluster. Silky sifakas are hunted throughout their range as there is no local taboo or "fady" against eating this species. Habitat disturbance, such as slash-and-burn agriculture (‘tavy’), logging of precious woods (for example, rosewood) and fuel-wood, also occurs within and adjacent to the protected areas where they are found. Silky Sifakas have never survived in captivity, probably due to their highly specialized folivorous diet.

Etymology

The name "sifaka" is a reference to a common vocalization given by western dry forest sifakas in which they give an explosive, hiss-like "shee-faak" call several times in succession. On the east coast, local residents refer to the larger bodied diademed sifakas as "simpona", a name which resembles their sneeze-like "Zzuss!" vocalizations.

Physical description

The Silky Sifaka is a large sifaka from northeastern Madagascar. It has a head-body length of 48-54 cm, a tail length of 45-51 cm, a total length of 93-105 cm, and a weight of 5 – 6.5 kg. The pelage is long, silky and white, which gives this species its common English name. In some individuals, silver-gray or black tints may appear on the crown, back and limbs, and the pygal region (at the base of the tail) is sometimes yellow. The muzzle and face are bare, the skin a mix of pink and black, with some individuals having all pink or all black faces. The tips of the naked black ears protrude just beyond the white fur of the head and cheeks. This species does not occur with any other sifakas and cannot be confused with any lemurs within its range.

Silky Sifakas exhibit extreme individual variation in partial skin pigmentation loss or leucism. Although all infants are believed to be born with predominantly black faces, with age some individuals lose their pigmentation and exhibit pink faces to varying degrees. The first western explorer to observe silky sifakas (Alfred Grandidier in 1871) believed that silky sifakas were an albino subspecies of diademed sifakas. It is now know that silky sifakas are not albinos.

All individuals possess some skin pigment and no photo-phobic individuals have been observed.

Unlike Perrier's Sifaka and Milne-Edwards' Sifaka, where adult males and females are difficult to distinguish, adult male and female Silky Sifaka can be readily distinguished from one another by the pelage coloration of the upper chest. Adult males possess a large brown “chest patch” that results from chest scent marking with the sternal gular gland. As rates of male chest scent marking increase during the mating season, male chest patches become far larger in size and can cover the entire front torso to the abdomen.

Behavior and natural history

A number of lemur surveys first documented the presence of Silky Sifakas within Marojejy National Park, Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve the Makira Forest Protected Area,the Betaolana Corridor and the Tsaratanana Corridor. More recently, a 14 month study and two short-term studies have examined the behavioral biology, communication, and feeding ecology of silky sifakas in Marojejy National Park. Silky sifakas exhibit the greatest elevational range of any sifaka species and can be found as low as 300m in altitude in the Makira (Andaparaty) and as high as 1875 m in Marojejy. Thus, they inhabit several types of elevation-specific habitats including primary montane rainforest, sclerophyllous forest, and even low ericoid bush at their highest elevations. The silky sifaka exhibits variable social structure living in male-female pairs, one-male groups, and multi-male/multi-female groups. Groups range in size from 2 to 9 individuals. 95% kernel home ranges vary by site from 34 to 47 hectares.

Approximately 25% of the day is spent feeding, 44.4% resting, and the remainder of day is devoted to social behavior (16.8%), traveling, and sleeping. Long bouts of terrestrial play involving adults are not uncommon. Rates of aggression are low, and mainly occur during feeding. Females exhibit feeding priority over males. Like other eastern sifakas, silky sifakas are folivorous seed predators that consume a huge variety of plant species. A recent 2 month study, documented feeding from 76 species across 42 families (mainly trees, but many lianas as well). During this short-term study, the most important plant families in the diet of Propithecus candidus were Moraceae (20.30%), Fabaceae (12.87%), Myrtaceae (12.65%), Clusiaceae (10.13%) and Apocynaceae (9.49%). These four most preferred foods accounted for 37.06% of total feeding time: fruit from Pachytrophe dimepate (16.09%), seeds from Senna sp. (8.43%), young leaves from Plectaneia thouarsii (6.52%), and fruit from Eugenia sp.3 (6.02%). Overall, 52% of feeding time was spent consuming leaves, 34% fruit, and 11% seeds. Flowers and soil were rarely consumed.

Mating is believed to occur on a single day each year in December or January with infants born in June or July. Generally, females give birth to a single infant every two years. Occasionally however, births in consecutive years by the same female have been observed. Infants initially grasp the fur on their mother’s belly and about four weeks later begin to ride “jockey style” on their mothers back. As is typical of Propithecus, all group members interact affiliatively with infants. Grooming is the most frequent form of non-maternal infant care, followed by playing, occasional carrying, as well as nursing in a few remarkable instances. Dispersal has been observed only once when a young adult male immigrated in 2007 aggressively forcing the older resident male out of the group he had been a member of for at least 7 years. Although eastern sifakas generally exhibit male and female group transfer, female transfer has not been observed.

The fossa is the only documented predator of the Silky Sifaka, other than human beings.

No aerial predation attempts by raptors have ever been observed, although these sifakas sometimes stare skyward and emit loud “aerial disturbance” roars in the presence of the large Madagascar buzzard (Buteo brachypterus), which does not eat lemurs, and other small birds. Loud sneeze-like “zzuss!” vocalizations are their second type of alarm call, and are emitted to terrestrial disturbances, in response to lost calls by other group members, and after receiving aggression. Acoustic analyses have revealed sex and individual differences in the acoustic structure of the silky sifaka zzuss vocalization. In sum, adult eastern sifakas have a moderately sized vocal repertoire of about 7 call types. Infants have several specialized vocalizations as well. Despite the relatively small size of their vocal repertoire, some eastern sifakas are highly vocal with high call rates averaging 7 calls per hour per individual in silky sifakas. The most frequently emitted vocalizations are low amplitude, low frequency, tonal "hum" and "mum" vocalizations. These contact calls are used in a variety of circumstances including group movement, affiliation, foraging, and while resting.

As in all prosimians, olfactory communication is well developed in sifakas. Eastern sifakas possess several specialized scent-marking glands that include a sebaceous chest gland only found in males and mixed apocrine-sebaceous genital glands in both sexes. Sifakas do not allomark, as in true lemurs, by directly scent-marking conspecifics. Females scent-mark trees by rubbing their genital glands against trees in a rhythmic vertical motion. Males scent-mark trees in several ways, by rubbing them with their chest gland, genital glands, or a combination of the two. Males routinely gouge trees with their toothcombs just prior to chest marking which leaves long lasting visible marks. Silky sifakas do not eat bark or gum, so such non-nutritive male tree gouging is likely communicative in function. Both sexes often urinate while scent-marking. Although males scent-mark two or three times as often females, female scent-marks are responded to far more often and more quickly than male marks. A one year study found that only 17% of male P. candidus marks are responded to by other group members but 71% of female marks received a response on average within 61 seconds. In both P. edwardsi and P. candidus, male overmarking of a female's mark is the most common response, followed by males overmarking the scent-marks of other males. Male eastern sifakas preferentially use one type of scent-marking, combined chest-ano-genital marking, when depositing an overmark. The high rates of overmarking practiced by male eastern sifakas lead to totem-tree marking in which certain trees are covered with male scent-marks and gouge marks. Extensive scent-marking of the home range border has not been observed in P. candidus or P. edwardsi.

Conservation

According to the most recent IUCN Red List assessment, the Silky Sifaka is "Critically Endangered". It is one of the rarest and most critically endangered lemurs. Silky sifakas are one of four lemurs listed as one of the “World’s Top 25 Most Critically Endangered Primates”. Global population size is estimated between 100 and 1000. Habitat disturbance, such as slash-and-burn agriculture (‘tavy’), logging of precious woods (e.g., rosewood) and fuel-wood, also occurs within the protected areas where they are found. Unlike Tattersalli's sifaka, there is no local taboo or fady against eating this species. Lemur traps are routinely encountered during surveys within silky sifaka habitat.

Illegal logging of precious wood, such as rosewood and ebony, has emerged as one of the most severe threats to Madagascar's northeastern rainforests. Thousands of logs, worth millions of dollars, have recently been confiscated at ports of Vohémar, Antalaha, and Toamasina. Most of these logs were harvested from the two largest protected areas in the region, Masoala National Park and Marojejy National Park. Harvesting these extremely heavy hardwoods is a labor intensive activity requiring coordination between local residents who manually cut the trees, but receive little profit, and a criminal network of exporters, domestic transporters, and corrupt officials who initiate the process and reap most of the profits. The impacts of such selective logging include violating local taboos as well as ecological consequences such as increased likelihood of fire, invasive species, impaired habitat, and loss in genetic diversity.

Local villages adjacent to its remaining protected areas adopted a two-pronged strategy towards Silky Sifaka conservation education. A "cognitive component" was implemented to increase knowledge and awareness through radio interviews, slide presentations, and the disbursement of literature in twelve primary and secondary schools, and an "emotional component" was begun to link Silky Sifaka conservation with positive emotional experiences, with the goal of establishing a psychological connection between the children and the lemur. To do this, groups of children were taken on three-day educational eco-tours in Marojejy National Park. The children's reactions to their up-close observations of the sifakas were "overwhelmingly positive and empathic".

Efforts are underway to expand Anjananharibe-Sud Special Reserve and to link existing parks and reserves through protection of continuous forest "corridors". These include Betaolana between Marojejy and Anjananharibe-Sud, and Makira, linking Anjananharibe-Sud with Masoala National Park to the south. The corridors will provide much-needed habitat for forest-dependent species like the Silky Sifaka. In addition, the corridors would provide the possibility of increasing genetic exchange between populations.

In May 2006 the WWF launched a project to use community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) to save this sifaka and its habitat. The project seeks to increase the education and awareness of local populations and to make them an active part in the management and habitat conservation of the lemur. It focuses on the corridor of Marojejy to southern Anjananharibe in the northern section and the Marojejy-Tsaratanana corridor in the western section. Ideally, the project hopes to transfer management of the lemurs and their habitat to local populations.

Range and distribution

The Silky Sifaka has a very restricted range in Northeastern Madagascar that includes the humid forest belt extending from Maroantsetra to the Andapa Basin and the Marojejy Massif. Marojejy National Park represents the northern limit of its known distribution, although at one time it may have occurred as far north as Sambava. The Androranga River may represent the northwestern range limit within the Tsaratanana Corridor. The Antainambalana River, within the Makira Conservation Site, is currently regarded as the southern limit. Northeastern Makira (Amparihibe, Bezavona) may contain Silky Sifakas, though none have yet been observed there.

This sifaka, rare and localized as it is, can be found relatively easily at Camp 2 (Marojejia) of Marojejy National Park where numerous comfortable bungalows, flush toilets, and covered dining areas replete with full cooking supplies have recently been built at three camps along the established trail to the remarkable Marojejy summit. Two days and nights should be set aside at Camp 2 to ensure finding the main tourist group. It is steep and a reasonable level of fitness is required. Visitors should visit the Information Kiosk in Manantenina, in the morning, to organize their trip. Trips can be arranged in advance through the ANGAP office in Andapa or through several private tour companies. With the recent completion of several bridges, visitors can now drive through the villages of Manantenina and Mandena, reducing the hike to Camp 2 to about four or five hours. Additionally, silky sifakas can be seen in the northwest portion of the park near Doany, but this site remains far off the traditional tourist circuit and requires expedition-level preparations to visit.

It is also possible to see this species in Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve in the Befingotra Forest and within the Makira Forest Protected Area (managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society) in the Andaparaty Forest to the north-west of Maroantsetra along the Antainambalana River. Trips to Anjanaharibe-Sud are best organized through the ANGAP office in Andapa. Neither of these sites have bungalows or any other tourist accommodations, and it could take several days or a week to find P. candidus. It is also possible to find this species in other parts of Anjanaharibe-Sud and Makira, but this is difficult and unreliable.

Diademed Sifaka

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The Diademed Sifaka is an endangered species of sifaka, one of the lemurs endemic to certain rainforests in eastern Madagascar. This species is one of the world's largest living lemurs, with a total adult length of approximately 105 centimetres (41 inches), half of which is tail. Russell Mittermeier, one of the contemporary authorities on lemurs, describes the Diademed Sifaka as "one of the most colorful and attractive of all the lemurs", having a long and silky coat. Like all other prosimians, this species has evolved independently of other primates for about 55 million years (Madagascar separated from the African continent about 90 million years ago.) P. diadema is also known by the Malagasy names Simpona, Simpony and Ankomba Joby. The term "Diademed Sifaka" is also used as a group species designation encompassing four distinct subspecies.

Description

P. diadema is readily distinguished from all the other lemur species (which number in excess of 70 as of 2006) by its characteristic markings and large physical size. Its entire coat is moderately long, silky and luxuriant. The long white fur encircling his muzzle and covering its cheeks, forehead and chin, engenders the "diadem" or crown appearance. Its eyes are a reddish-brown, the muzzle is short, and the face is bare with colourisation of darkish gray to jet black. The crown fur is also quite black and often extends to the nape of the neck. The upper back and shoulder fur are slate grayish, although the lower back is lighter in colour attaining a silvery quality. Flanks and tail are a paler gray, sometimes even white, as is the case for ventral fur. Hands and feet are entirely black, while arms, legs and base of tail are a yellowish-golden hue. Only the male is endowed with a large cutaneous gland at the exterior center of the throat, which feature is typically reddish-brown.

Range and habitat

The Diademed Sifaka is one of the mostly widely distributed member of the Propithecus genus, although definitive mapping of its range has not been conducted. Occurrence is at altitudes of 200 to 800 metres (656 to 2624 feet) throughout much of the eastern Madagascar lowland forests and altitudes 800 to 1550 metres (2624 to 5084 feet); in portions of the Madagascar subhumid forests. These two biomes have been designated as a Global 200 ecoregion, one of the world's most significant regions for conservation. Geographically the range extends to at least the Mananara River in the north to the Onive and Mongoro Rivers in the south. One set of researchers has recorded a clinal variation between Propithecus diadema and Propithecus edwardsi in the extreme southern portion of the range. As with all Indriidae, this species and its entire genus have evolved on the island of Madagascar independent of other mainland African species.

An anomalous outlier population of P. diadema has been discovered in south central Madagascar; the members of this population exhibit an array of different colour markings, including at least one observation of an all black lemur. DNA analyses have not resulted in consistent results as to whether this group of individuals should constitute a new species. Scientists have decided to classify this outlier group as P. diadema until further research warrants designation of a separate species.

Specific locations for sighting the Diademed Sifaka are Mantadia National Park (approximately three hours in driving time from the capital city of Antananarivo) and in the forests of Tsinjoarivo.

Behaviour

The Diademed Sifaka forms groups typically of two to ten individuals, which may include multiple male and female adults. Each troop defends an exclusive home territory of 25 to 50 hectares (62 to 125 acres) using perimeter scent territorial marking by both the males and females. Although the Diademed Sifaka defends the group's territory strongly against other members of their same species, it will share territory with other species such as the Red-bellied Lemur and the Common Brown Lemur. P. diadema is thought to traverse the greatest daily path distance relative to other members of its family in its patrolling and foraging, attaining a typical travel distance in excess of 1.6 kilometres (one mile) per day. To accomplish this it consumes a diet high in energy content and diverse in plant content, each day consuming over 25 different vegetative species. This diurnal prosimian further diversifies its diet by consuming not only fruits, but certain flowers, seeds and verdant leaves, in proportions that vary by season.

For a large lemur, the Diademed Sifaka is rather athletic, being capable of lateral aerial propulsion of up to 30 kilometers per hour, a result of muscular leg thrusting action pushing off from a vertical tree trunk. It is possible, although not proven, that its vigorous health characteristics are enhanced from high consumption of two plants which contain high concentrations of alkaloids. This species is arboreal, and only rarely are seen on the ground; moreover, it is a vertical clinger and lateral leaper.

The Diademed Sifaka makes a warning call resembling the sound "kiss-sneeze" when a terrestrial predator is perceived; the sole terrestrial predators of P. diadema are the Fossa and Nile crocodile.

Sexual maturity occurs after age two or three, with the male maturing somewhat more slowly than the female. Little is known of mating behaviour; however, it is believed that the female is receptive only a few days per year. Being dominant, the female has the greatest input to mate selection. Copulation occurs in the summer (around December), and the expected number of births is one offspring per female per annum.

Conservation issues

The Diademed Sifaka is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. As of the year 2002, population estimates for the species range between 6,000 and 10,000 individuals. The primary threat is habitat reduction due to shifting cultivation by native peoples. This threat is also present even within designated national parks, which are sufficiently distant from the center of government, that enforcement of existing national laws protecting P. diadema habitat is problematic. Pressures of overpopulation in central and eastern Madagascar are causing many of the rural poor to seek subsistence by seizing whatever forest lands are available and undertaking slash-and-burn tactics as their initial step in a shifting cultivation system. Returns from such land use are usually meager, yielding small amounts of charcoal, firewood or grass crop for grazing of Zebu.

Classification

The Diademed Sifaka and four other sifaka species form a tight species group within the Propithecus genus. The other four species are Milne-Edwards' Sifaka (Propithecus edwardsi), Perrier's Sifaka (P. perrieri), the Golden-crowned Sifaka, P. tattersalli, and the Silky Sifaka (P. candidus). All of these species have luxuriant silky coats and are powerful leapers. They share similar characteristics of gestation length (four months), age of sexual maturity, female dominance, life expectancy (18 years) and propensity for sunbathing while stretched out on a branch. They differ distinctly in colouration and markings, except for having universally totally black faces.

Sahamalaza Sportive Lemur

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The Sahamalaza Sportive Lemur is a sportive lemur endemic to Madagascar. It has a total length of about 51 to 54 centimeters, of which 26-27 centimeters are tail. Sahamalaza's Sportive Lemur is found in northwestern Madagascar, living in subhumid forest and some secondary forests.

Red-tailed Sportive Lemur

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The Red-tailed Sportive Lemur is, like all lemurs, native to Madagascar. It is a nocturnal species feeding largely on leaves, though they also eat some fruit. Individuals weigh around 800 grams, and there is little sexual dimorphism. In general they live in mated pairs, with a home range of about 10,000 square metres. Both members of the pair use the same home range, and there is little overlap between the home ranges of neighbouring pairs. Travel distances each night are between 100 metres and 1 km, making this a relatively inactive species. This species can be found in the Madagascar dry deciduous forests.

Brown Mouse Lemur

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The Brown Mouse Lemur is a small primate, and like the other mouse lemurs can only be found on the island of Madagascar. They are known also as the Red Mouse Lemur, the Eastern Rufous Mouse Lemur or the Russet Mouse Lemur. Its dorsal side is brown or reddish-brown, while ventrally it is a whitish-grey.

It was originally considered a subspecies of the Gray Mouse Lemur until 1977, when it was reclassified as a separate species.

The mouse lemurs are among the shortest-lived of primates. The Brown Mouse Lemur has a lifespan of 6-8 years in the wild, although it averages 12 years under human care.

It can be found in rainforests in Eastern Madagascar, and is widely distributed. It is a solitary and nocturnal creature.

Pygmy Mouse Lemur

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Pygmy Mouse Lemur and Peters' Mouse Lemur are common names for the species Microcebus myoxinus, a primate weighing only 43–55 g (1.5–1.9 oz); it is the second smallest of the mouse lemurs. Its dorsal side is a rufous-brown colour, and creamy-white ventrally. It lives in dry deciduous forests.

The Pygmy Mouse Lemur measures around 12–13 cm (4.7–5.1 in) (head-body length). Its small size and nocturnal nature made it difficult to locate for over a century, and was rediscovered in the Kirindy forest in western Madagascar in 1993. They are believed to inhabit other parts of the island, but so far have only been discovered in a localized area.

The lemur rests during the day, and it has a tendency to sleep in the open, which increases the risk of predation; although this danger is somewhat mitigated by sleeping alone. It can also use the abandoned nests of the Coquerel's Giant Mouse Lemur (Mirza coquereli).