Colobus Monkey Facts

(Last Updated On: March 4, 2022)

Colobus monkey tails cling elegantly from rainforest branches. Mischievous faces peer out, with wispy white beards making them a fascinating sight. This article will give an overview of colobus monkey facts, baby, diet, red, habitat, scientific name, sound, species and locomotion.

Colobus monkeys reside within the forests and grasslands of Central Africa. They’re discovered most frequently in second-growth or degraded forests or alongside rivers.

Consider Africa and you’ll simply consider gorillas, chimpanzees, and baboons. Don’t neglect the colobus monkey. They’re some of the memorable and lesser-known wildlife highlights of visiting Africa.

The lifetime of a colobus monkey

Colobus monkeys reside largely within the bushes and eat leaves and fruit. To assist them to digest all that foliage, they have got a multi-chambered abdomen and intestine microbes that break down cellulose. They get water from dew and the moisture of their meals, or from rainwater in tree hollows.

Colobus monkeys are uncommon for his or her stunning black and white coloring. They’re 18 to 27 inches lengthy, not counting their tails, and weigh between 12 and 32 kilos.

Males are often barely larger than females. With solely 4 fingers and no thumb, they transfer rapidly via the bushes.

Colobus monkeys reside in small teams often made up of 1 male, Three or Four females, and associated adolescents and infants.

Females keep within the group they had been born into for the remainder of their lives, and infants are carried and brought care of by all of the females within the group.

Younger males depart their household group earlier than they’re totally mature, both voluntarily or as a result of the grownup male forces them out. Some males go on to guide their very own group of females.

The group spends over half the day resting and the remaining hours feeding and transferring via the bushes.

They convey with snorts, purrs, caws, screams, and tongue clicking. They sleep collectively at night time, spreading out into adjoining bushes near a meal supply.

At daybreak and night-time, the dominant male roars loudly, echoed by the opposite males within the neighborhood. These high-intensity roaring classes talk dominance and keep house between teams.

Every group has a well-defined territory of about 40 acres. Conflicts over overlapping territories may be noisy.

The males of the 2 competing teams flap their white fringe fur, leap, cry, roar, and chase one another. Regardless of all this dramatic exercise, some teams share water holes and different vital assets.

Reproduction takes place all year long. After a gestation interval lasting about 6 months, the mom often provides delivery to a single toddler.

Colobus infants are pure white; their black fur would not seem for a number of weeks. Infants are 7-Eight inches lengthy and weigh rather less than a pound. Their eyes are open, and so they cling to their mom’s or father’s abdomen.

Each mother and father are concerned about parenting, and for the primary few months, the newborn is the main target of the entire group’s consideration. Starting at around 20 weeks, a younger colobus turns into more and more impartial.

Colobus monkeys reside 25 to 30 years.

Facts

1. They reside in troops of Eight to 15 people

That’s a fairly good quantity. There are sufficient monkeys to search for hazards and defend a territory. However not sufficient to deplete a meal supply or create an excessive amount of bother between themselves.

Vervet monkey troops are a lot bigger and also you’ll often see these monkeys preventing amongst one another. Colobus monkeys reside in troops an analogous measurement to gorilla troops, the place there’s a dominant male however everybody tends to get on with one another.

2. Colobus monkeys can reside to 20 years within the wild

Let’s evaluate this to different primates. Vervet monkeys can solely survive 12 years within the wild, chimpanzees attain 40 to 50, whereas only a few macaques make it to 15 years.

3. People have exterminated these monkeys from some areas

When colonialists arrived in Africa they couldn’t get sufficient of colobus monkeys. Their stunning skins had been used to make hats, capes, and dance costumes.

Better of all for hunters, these monkeys aren’t skittish. They only loosen up within the treetops, a sitting goal for any rifle. So whereas colobus monkeys stay widespread, many localized populations have been misplaced during the last 300 years.

4. A ravishing, bashful primate

Many monkeys are playful and aggressive. They are going to bounce at folks, grabbing any meals from their palms. Vervet monkeys collect round eating places to steal meals from tables.

However, colobus monkeys are chillers. They cling within the forest cover, dreaming the day away. There’s nothing frenzied or quick about them. Spot a colobus monkey and it impresses the laid-back rhythm of the African wilderness.

5. Colobus monkeys are distinctive in that they don’t have thumbs

How odd! However fully true. Nearly all primates have opposable thumbs, permitting them (and us!) to choose up issues and eat with one hand. Not colobus monkeys. Slightly than reside on the forest ground, they’re tailored to reside excessive within the bushes, the place such dexterous thumbs aren’t as vital.

6. Some colobus monkeys are hunted by chimpanzees

How stunning! Within the forests of Uganda’s Kibale Nationwide Park, chimpanzees have hunted colobus monkeys to the purpose of extinction.

They kill crimson colobus monkeys for meat to complement their fruit weight-reduction plan. In common, troops will kill three monkeys on each profitable hunt. In addition, they go after black and white colobus monkeys in the identical park.

This behavior has been reported in different national parks as effectively, together with these within the Congo Basin and East Africa.

7. The place do colobus monkeys reside?

All species of colobus monkeys reside in closed forests. They like the cover, slightly than the forest ground, so in contrast to different primates equivalent to baboons, colobus isn’t comfy on the savannah.

They were specific like montane, mopane, and gallery forests. Bamboo stands are one other favorite place for the monkeys to reside. You may as well encounter them near the coast, in forests that cling over East Africa’s seashores.

8. All colobus monkeys are old-world monkeys

They developed around 2 – Four million years in the past. For those who observe the household tree again one other few million years, you’ll discover that these monkeys have identical ancestors as us.

9. There are 5 completely different species of colobus monkey

All these species reside in sub-Saharan Africa and everyone has subspecies as effectively. In contrast to giraffe or elephant, these completely different species have overlapping ranges. So you possibly can see multiple of them in the identical park.

10. One colobus species is understood to eat concrete

The mantled guereza is native to West, Central, and East Africa. It takes its title from white fringes of hair that run straight alongside its physique, generally known as a mantle.

Amazingly, they’ve been reported to eat concrete. Yep, in addition to fruits, flowers, bark, and soil, the mantled guereza has been consuming buildings inside nationwide parks!

11. An unimaginable four-chambered abdomen

How can something eat concrete? Colobus monkeys have a four-chambered abdomen, permitting them to course of meals that will make some other primate sick.

In addition to concrete, this enables the monkeys to eat unripe fruit, so that they have a bonus over many different forest species. They’ll defend their dwelling territory slightly than be on the transfer in search of ripened fruit.

12 . Colobus monkeys are prey for eagles and leopards

Together with chimpanzees, colobus makes a favorite meal for leopards. The stealthy hunter creeps throughout the tree branches and might hunt each younger and outdated monkeys.

Eagles can carry off prey that’s many instances of its personal weight. Colobus just like the forest cover because it has good meals and retains them away from lions and different predators. However, whereas they’re chilling they might be grabbed by eagles.

13. The primary menace to colobus monkeys is ourselves

Sadly, individuals are the primary purpose colobus monkeys are endangered. Their numbers proceed to fall.

They’re nonetheless hunted for bushmeat and their unimaginable fur.

The largest drawback is a human perspective on the wilderness. Colobus monkeys are dropping their pure habitat, as forests are chopped down for logging, agriculture and human settlements.

Habitat degradation and habitat fragmentation make it tougher for these monkeys to outlive. Colobus wishes to be deep within the forest. When bushes are chopped down it has a big impact on the place they’ll survive. Whereas some species can survive on the fringes, colobus can’t.

However, we will do one thing about it. Simply visiting Africa and seeing a wild colobus monkey helps to unfold an optimistic message. The extra individuals who encounter these monkeys the extra their story can be shared, and hopefully, colobus monkeys can be round for future generations.

14. Black and white colobus monkeys are simply seen on the seaside in Kenya

Probably the most hanging of all of them, black-and-white colobus has a thick white beard that surrounds their face. Their tails are most spectacular, curling down from the cover then snapping into motion once they bounce between bushes.

You’ll discover these monkeys all throughout Kenya, typically very near city areas. They reside across the campsites of Lake Naivasha and may be seen subsequent to the white sand of Diani Seaside.

15. Ursine colobus monkeys are born with an all-white fur coat

Recognizing these infants may be very troublesome. They reside within the distant forests of West Africa, together with within Ghana and Togo.

Children come out fully white and solely achieve their black fur after three months. Like all primates they aren’t capable of stroll at delivery; colobus monkeys should be carried by their moms.

16. Black colobus monkeys are identified to be satanic

Also called the satanic black colobus because of its fierce facial expressions, these monkeys are endangered and are solely present in a small space of West Africa.

Realistically you’ll want to go to Gabon or Equatorial Guinea to see them, with the biggest inhabitants dwelling in Lope Reserve, Gabon. Or you possibly can seek for an uncommon coastal subspecies that are solely discovered on Bioko Island off Cameroon.

17. An endemic crimson colobus monkey may be visited on the island of Zanzibar

Crimson colobus monkeys have the identical black and white faces, plus a distinctively crimson fur coat. There are numerous subspecies and all of those are thought of as susceptible or endangered.

Round 1000 Zanzibar crimson colobus reside in Jozani Forest, a small national park in the course of the island. It’s an amazing half-day journey throughout a keep in Stone City.

Colobus monkey conservation

The colobus monkey is listed as “Least Concern” by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

They’re nonetheless widespread as a result of they’ll reside in degraded forests, however, clearance of the forests generally is a menace to them, particularly in East Africa.

Within the 1920s and 1930s, they had been hunted for his or her fur, and so they proceed to be over-hunted and bought in Africa in the present day.

How one can assist colobus monkeys

You may assist colobus monkeys and different forest-dwelling wildlife by in search of the FSC label whenever you buy wooden and paper merchandise. Study extra.

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Colobus Monkey Facts | Diet | Habitat | Sound