Types of Monkeys

Types of monkeys are classified into two major groups, the New World primates (South and Central America) and the Old World primates (Asia and Africa). The major difference, besides living on different continents, is that the New World primates have tails that can grasp and hold things while the Old World primates can't do much with their tails and sometimes have no tail at all. New World primates do not have versatile opposable thumbs like many other primates and most Old World primates do.

New World Monkeys

Pygmy Marmoset - The Smallest Monkey

 These are the smallest monkeys in the world although there are some primates that are bit smaller (pygmy mouse lemurs and pygmy tarsiers). The body weight of adults in the wild averages only 4 ounces! You can see from the picture above why they are often called "finger monkeys." They are about 5 inches (13cm) tall, not including the tail. Which means they might be hard to observe in the wild as they tiny enough to be high-up in the trees on small branches. Up there, they have to be on the lookout for birds of prey. They are able to jump more than 16 ft or 5 m! Quite a distance for such a small monkey.

Squirrel Monkeys are some of the most common monkeys in South and Central American rainforests. They have a very large range throughout the Amazon and otherrainforests. They live in groups of 10-70 but have been seen in groups as large as 100-300 individuals. The groups are split up into adult male bands, groups of mothers with their young, and juvenile bands. Mothers with their young seem to form the core of their society but neither males or females try to dominate. Adult males come around to intermingle with the females during the several months of year that mating occurs.

Squirrel Monkeys

Squirrel monkeys are shy, non-aggressive and silent but make little squeaks and peeps at times and may shriek if they are in danger. They generally stay in the tree canopies but may occasionally come down to the ground to look for food. They have long tails which they use for support and balance as they are agile climbers andleapers. They also have hairy ears

Spider Monkeys - Jungle Acrobats, High Swingers

The spider monkey is just that - spidery. Mostly dark brown and black all over they have long tails, spindly legs, little pot bellies, little heads, long hands and bare faces. They make their way through the jungle swinging acrobatically with their gangly long arms.

Saki Monkey - Thick, Long-Coated Fuzzy Face

Saki Monkey is a more common name for any primate that is a member of the Pithecia genus. There are 8 saki species in this group and there are also 5 in another genus - Chiropotes or “bearded sakis”. They live all across South America from South Colombia to Central Brazil. They are arboreal and live in the trees of rainforest regions.The monkeys are smallish in size and have impressively long bushy tails. They have especially strong hind legs so they can make the huge leaps needed when moving from tree to tree. They can reach up to 20 inches (50 cm) and 4.4 lbs (2 kg) in weight. They have rough furry skin which can be black, grey or reddish depending on the particularly species. This face is often naked with no fur at all but they do all have afurry hood around their faces. The Guianan saki the males and females have vastly different appearances, the male is all black shaggy, long fur with a pale, yellow-orange face and black nose while the female is gray-brown with white-tipped hairs and white stripes on the sides of her nose. The black bearded saki is also of notable appearance with a long reddish-brown coat and what looks like a neatly trimmed, long beard of anImam.They live up to thirty years and their young are fully mature at about three years old. They mate whenever they feel like it and there is no specific mating period. The gestational period is approximately 150-170 days and they give birth to a single offspring.

Golden Lion Tamarin - The Lion Monkey

The golden lion tamarin or lion monkey, a native of Brazil, is one of the most brilliantly colored animals of all the mammals. The little fireball monkey has a big gold-orange-yellow ruff or mane of long hair around its face and neck covering its ears. Some of them are a very light golden color, others are rather bright orange and still others have some dark brown coloration as well. The hands, feet and face however are a dark brown or purple-ish color. It is a small-medium sized monkey averaging about 8 inches (20 cm) tall with a tail about that long also.The golden lion tamarin or lion monkey, a native of Brazil, is one of the most brilliantly colored animals of all the mammals. The little fireball monkey has a big gold-orange-yellow ruff or mane of long hair around its face and neck covering its ears. Some of them are a very light golden color, others are rather bright orange and still others have some dark brown coloration as well. The hands, feet and face however are a dark brown or purple-ish color. It is a small-medium sized monkey averaging about 8 inches (20 cm) tall with a tail about that long also.it is an endangered species as there may only be 1000 or less individuals left in the wild. It lives in a small region in the Southeastern part of Brazil near the coast. Maybe that is why they appear sad in some of the photos but we are rooting for them to re-populate!

Owl or Night Monkey


The owl monkeys are rain forest monkeys that have a bit of an owlish face that always seems to be smiling. They have many different vocalizations, up to 50 or more, including a piercing alarm shriek. They are night eaters, usually in pairs, they go browsing and foraging, eating fruit, leaves, and insects in the dark forest. In the daytime they sleep together in small family groups within hallowed-out trees.

Howler Monkeys - Jungle Noisemakers - World's Loudest Animal

Howler monkeys define the jungles of the Americas with their ruckus. Without their throaty howl it wouldn’t be the same. As the sun rises, the howlers inflate their throat sacs like great wind instruments and bellow a haunting, deafening call that can carry for miles (as many as 10). They are perhaps the loudest animals on land. Howling is mostly an activity for the males but the females vocalize a little too.Then when they finish with their morning howl they start foraging for breakfast. They chew and climb slowly, taking days to cover the square kilometer expanse of a group’s range. A male, female, their young, and the whole clan will slowly move along in the upper jungle branches. They crawl along, not leaping and swinging like spider monkeys, and tend to use their favorite paths over and over. They almost always have a good grip on things with their long prehensile tails. They can spend long hours gazing into the jungle. Apparently, their diet of fruit and leaves is not very energizing for these big monkeys and they can sleep as much as 15 hours in a day. They are the largest monkeys in the Americas.

Snub-nosed Monkeys aka "Sneezing" or "Michael Jackson" Monkeys

Most closely related to colobus, doucs and other leaf monkeys are a group of monkeys known for their stubby snouts – the snub-nosed monkeys, sometimes also called langurs. They really have no snout at all, just some holes where a nose might be and if a raindrop falls right in there the monkey has to sneeze. They live all over Southern China and into Tibet, Vietnam and Myanmar. There are several different species colored in various ways. Sometimes they are called by their colors, other times by the region they come from and other times by the name of their discoverers. There are the Golden (including the Moupin, Qinling and Hubei subspecies), the Black (aka Biet’s, akaYunnan), the Gray (aka Brelich’s), the Tonkin and the Myanmar (recently discovered) species. And there is also the more distantly related Pig-tailed snub-nosed of the Mentawi Islands, Indonesia.

Mandrill - The Largest and Most Colorful of All Monkeys

What a monkey the mandrill is! Not only is it the world's largest species of monkey, with males occasionally weighing as much as 110 lbs (50 kg) and standing up to 3 ft (90 cm) tall; it's also the most colorful monkey there is. In fact, Charles Darwin once said of this large baboon, “no other member in the whole class of mammals is colored in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrills”. With it's olive green or dark gray coat with yellow and black bands, a white belly, a hairless face, red nostrils and lips, a yellow beard with white tufts, an elongated muzzle with it's own distinctive characteristics (a red stripe down the middle and protruding blue ridges on the sides) and a lower body that can be red, pink, blue, scarlet, and purple, the mandrill is a sight to see! The female is not so massive and scary, she looks small in comparison to the male and is not so brightly colored.What a monkey the mandrill is! Not only is it the world's largest species of monkey, with males occasionally weighing as much as 110 lbs (50 kg) and standing up to 3 ft (90 cm) tall; it's also the most colorful monkey there is. In fact, Charles Darwin once said of this large baboon, “no other member in the whole class of mammals is colored in so extraordinary a manner as the adult male mandrills”. With it's olive green or dark gray coat with yellow and black bands, a white belly, a hairless face, red nostrils and lips, a yellow beard with white tufts, an elongated muzzle with it's own distinctive characteristics (a red stripe down the middle and protruding blue ridges on the sides) and a lower body that can be red, pink, blue, scarlet, and purple, the mandrill is a sight to see! The female is not so massive and scary, she looks small in comparison to the male and is not so brightly colored.The male will leave it's natal group at around six years of age, and will spend the rest of it's long life (in captivity they have been seen living up to 31 years) on the peripheralof the horde, only entering the main group to mate. Mandrills use grunts and teethbaring to communicate over both short, and long distances. They are considered a “vulnerable” species, and are in danger of becoming extinct if their natural habitat continues to be destroyed.

Clouded Leopard - Rare Asian Cat with Cloud Spots

The clouded leopard is a very rare cat from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia(Sumatra and Borneo), India and Nepal that lives in the forest and has a powerful long body (2 ft to 42 inches (62 - 106 cm)) with short legs and a long tail. It is a medium-sized cat and weighs around 40 pounds (18 kg) and is mostly nocturnal. The coat of the cat is beautifully patched with cloud-shaped spots, with black lining on the "clouds". It often has black spots on the head, black rings on the tail and stripes on the neck while the rest of the coat ranges from yellowish to light gray.

The clouded leopard is a good climber and is often waiting in the trees, watching for prey. When it spots prey passing below, it jumps down from the tree to attack. But it can also hunt well on the ground. It can inflict serious damage with its bite as it has long, strong canine teeth (the longest of all cats proportional to its size). Its stalks a number of prey including pigs, birds, small deer and cattle.

 Deforestation and poaching have depleted the leopard's numbers and there are an estimated 10,000 in the wild.

 

Nicobar Pigeon

The Nicobar Pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) is a pigeon found on small islands and in coastal regions from the Nicobar Islands, east through the Malay Archipelago, to the Solomons and Palau. It is the only living member of the genus Caloenas.

Description

An adult at the Milwaukee County Zoological Gardens with iridescent scapulars

It is a large pigeon, measuring 40 cm in length. The head is grey, like the upper neck plumage, which turns into green and copper hackles towards the breast. The breast and remiges are dark grey. The tail is very short and pure white. The rest of its plumage is metallic green. The cere of the dark bill forms a small blackish knob; the strong legs and feet are dull red. The irides are dark.

Females are slightly smaller than males; they have a smaller bill knob, shorter hackles and browner underparts. Immature birds have a black tail and lack almost all iridescence. There is hardly any variation across the birds' wide range. Even the Palau subspecies C. n. pelewensis has merely shorter neck hackles, but is otherwise almost identical.It is not a very vocal species, giving a low-pitched repetitive call.

Behaviour and ecology

The Nicobar Pigeon's breeding range encompasses the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, the Mergui Archipelago of Myanmar, offshore islands of south-western Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, southern Cambodia and Vietnam, and many of the small islands between Sumatra, the Philippines and theSolomon Islands. On Palau, the only distinct subspecies C. n. pelewensis is found.

The white tail is the most conspicuous feature of adult Nicobar Pigeons, particularly when seen at a distance in the twilight

The Nicobar Pigeon roams in flocks from island to island, usually sleeping on offshore islets where no predators occur and spends the day in areas with better food availability, not shying away from areas inhabited by humans. Its food consists of seeds, fruit and buds, and it is attracted to areas where grain is available. A gizzard stone helps to grind up hard food items. Its flight is quick, with regular beats and an occasional sharp flick of the wings, as is characteristic of pigeons in general. Unlike other pigeons, groups tend to fly in columns or single file, not in a loose flock. The white tail is prominent in flight when seen from behind and may serve as a sort of "taillight", keeping flocks together when crossing the sea at dawn or dusk. The young birds' lack of a white tail is a signal of their immaturity clearly visible to conspecifics – to an adult Nicobar Pigeon, it is obvious at a glance which flockmembers are neither potential mates, nor potential competitors for mates, nor old enough to safely guide a flock from one island to another.

This species nests in dense forest on offshore islets, often in large colonies. It builds a loose stick nest in a tree. It lays one elliptical faintly blue-tinged white egg.

Habitat

Close up of the head

On the Nicobar Islands (which are referred to in its common and scientific names), the most significant colony in our time was found on Batti Malv, a remote wildlife sanctuary between Car Nicobar andTeressa. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused massive damage on the Nicobar Islands, and it is still not quite clear to what extent Batti Malv was affected. But while everything on some islets in theGreat Nicobar Biosphere Reserve was destroyed, Batti Malv lighthouse – a skeletal tower a dozen metres high, standing a few metres ASL at the highest point of the low-lying island – was little-damaged and put back in operation by thesurvey ship INS Sandhayak less than one month after the disaster. An April 2007 survey by the Indian Coast Guard vessel ICGS Vikramfound the lighthouse tower "totally covered" in vines, indicating rampant regeneration of vegetation – but perhaps also that damage to the island's forest was severe, as a cover of creeping plants is typical of early succession stages, while a photo of the lighthouse taken before the tsunami shows rather mature forest.

Systematics

Based on cladistic analysis of mtDNA cytochrome b and 12S rRNA sequences, the Nicobar Pigeon is sometimes called the closest living relative of the extinct didines (Raphinae), which include the famous Dodo (Raphus cucullatus). But the original study only yielded this result as just one possibility of several even from a rather limited sample of taxa, and not with a very high confidence either. In any case, nDNA β-fibrinogen intron 7 sequence data agrees with the idea of the Raphinae as a subfamily of pigeons (and not an independent family, as was previously believed due to their bizarre apomorphies) that was part of a diverse Indopacific radiation, to which the Nicobar Pigeon also belongs.

The following cladogram, from Shapiro and colleagues (2002), shows the Nicobar Pigeon's closest relationships within Columbidae, aclade consisting of generally ground-dwelling island endemics.

Goura victoria (Victoria Crowned Pigeon) Caloenas nicobarica (Nicobar Pigeon) Pezophaps solitaria (Rodrigues Solitaire) Raphus cucullatus (Dodo) Didunculus strigirostris (Tooth-billed Pigeon)