Monkeys how many species are there

In addition, they regularly groom each other, thereby keeping clean and satisfying psychological needs at the same time. Grooming is a very pleasurable activity for primates, including humans. It is important to note that the few nocturnal primate species are the least social. Primates have been very successful animals due largely to the fact that they are intelligent and opportunistic in getting food.

Most are unusually adaptable in diet. This has tremendous evolutionarily selective value. Many species are omnivorous , though vegetable foods usually make up the bulk of calories consumed by most primate species because they are easier to obtain. By comparison, animals such as koalas and giant pandas are generally less successful because they are extremely limited in the kinds of foods that they can or will eat. Koalas subsist on the leaves of a few species of eucalyptus, and giant pandas primarily eat the shoots of a small number of bamboo species.

If these food sources are not available, koalas and giant pandas die. Not surprisingly, their highly limited range of foods restricts where they can live. This is not the case with many primate species. Are Primates Good Pets? Often people who have not had the responsibility of taking care of a monkey or ape in captivity think that they would be great pets. After all, they are cute when they are youngsters and remarkably human-like.

However, they generally make very poor pets. As one monkey owner said "People find out when it's too late. After six months, they're like a two year-old that can fly. In addition to being destructive, most are as messy as human babies. Unlike humans, however, they remain this way all of their unusually long lives. Owning large apes in particular is a lifelong commitment that takes considerable patience, energy, and money. Male chimpanzees can be surprisingly violent in their interactions with each other and humans.

In recent years, several people have been extensively maimed and even killed by their pet chimpanzees in the U. All rights reserved. Natural range of non-human primates. Hook-like power grip cotton-top tamarin Precision grip chimpanzees Secure power grip orangutan. Comparison of ring-tailed lemur , patas monkey, and human noses. Additional information about primate color vision.

Chimpanzees grooming Humans grooming. Ring-tailed lemurs. Spider monkey Count the number of fingers This is the only primate that has hands with 4 fingers and feet with 5 toes. Hook-like power grip cotton-top tamarin. Precision grip chimpanzees.

Secure power grip orangutan. Upright posture lowland gorilla. Primate Gestation Periods measured in days. The Old World monkeys of Africa and Asia comprise approximately species in the family Cercopithecidae. They exhibit striking diversity in habitat , distribution, diet, and social behavior. Living in deserts, rainforests, snowy mountains, and even cities, Old World monkeys include two especially species-rich genera and several exceptionally widespread species. They are medium to large monkeys typically 4—20 kg , with the under 2 kg talapoin and over 30 kg male mandrill and snub-nosed monkey at each extreme.

Old World monkeys differ from New World monkeys in having downward-pointing nostrils Figure 1 and only two pre-molars, while the presence of tails in nearly all forms differentiates them from apes. There are two subfamilies in Cercopithecidae: Cercopithecinae includes monkeys with simple digestive systems and cheek pouches , and Colobinae includes monkeys with guts anatomically specialized for feeding on leaves.

Figure 1 Some Old World monkeys live in and on the outskirts of cities, such as this Japanese macaque living in a remnant forest overlooking downtown Kyoto. Recent classifications propose three African and seven Asian genera Groves Arboreal colobus are found throughout African forests.

In the west, the smallest and least-studied genus, Procolobus olive colobus , has the most restricted range and is represented by a single species. Piliocolobus red colobus includes 16 allopatric species, widely distributed from Senegal to Zanzibar; many are endangered , and one possibly extinct IUCN From Guinea to Ethiopia, the five mostly allopatric black-and-white Colobus species have the broadest distribution and occupy the widest variety of forest habitats.

Like their African cousins, most Asian colobines are primarily arboreal , though the forests they inhabit cover a wider range of latitudes and altitudes, from lowland tropical to montane.

Grey langurs Semnopithecus , the most terrestrial colobines, occur throughout western Asia from Sri Lanka to Nepal in habitat ranging from moist, scrub, and conifer forest to gardens and temples. Surilis Presbytis and lutongs Trachypithecus occupy dipterocarp forest and rubber plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, with Trachypithecus species extending north to China and west to India.

Six allopatric taxa in the Trachypithecus Francoisi group, many of which are endangered, live almost exclusively in limestone karst habitat, sleeping in caves and clambering on rocky cliffs. All three douc species Pygathrix of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are rare and endangered, the grey-shanked douc P. The four snub-nosed monkey species Rhinopithecus , also endangered, occupy the most extreme environments — the montane forests of China, Vietnam, and Myanmar, where a new species was recently discovered Geissman et al.

Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys R. Figure 2 Old World monkeys occupy a broad range of habitats, including — for these Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys Rhinopithecus bieti — temperate forests where it snows in winter. All rights reserved. Home ranges of most colobines are small 2 , reflecting the relative abundance of the leaves they eat. Range sizes of many colobines vary seasonally, tracking the proportion of different dietary components.

West African olive and red colobus often associate with Diana monkeys Cercopithecus diana , a cercopithecine. A likely benefit to both colobus and Diana monkeys is mutual predator detection: red colobus, traveling higher in the canopy, are better positioned to detect shared aerial predators, while Diana monkeys sound the alarm recognized by colobus for arboreal and terrestrial predators Fashing The more leaves consumed, the more time gut microbes need to process them.

Colobine field researchers, therefore, excel at watching their stationary subjects digest. Nasalis larvatus , like other colobines, spend a large part of their day resting. Colobine groups are typically moderate-sized 10—20 , containing multiple adult females and 1—2 adult males. Multi-male groups of some Asian colobines are best described as traveling assemblages of one-male units. Snub-nosed monkeys are a striking extreme — 20 one-male units can form bands of over individuals Kirkpatrick Other multi-male groups may be only temporary, occurring during male take-overs or when a son has matured.

The African red colobus is an exception to this pattern, living permanently in larger multi-male groups of 25—50 Fashing Colobines exhibit various patterns of sex-biased dispersal Fashing , Kirkpatrick Male-biased dispersal characterizes Asian colobines and African black-and-white colobus, although females may also transfer groups; in some species, dispersing males join all-male groups.

In contrast, females are generally the ones to disperse in African red and olive colobus. A notable exception is the endangered Zanzibar red colobus Piliocolobus kirkii living at high densities in human gardens, where philopatric females may obtain food more successfully when supported by female kin Siex The prevalence of one-male units in Asian colobines suggests strong male-male competition for resident status.

Indeed, interactions between units can be aggressive, and species with the most frequently associating units are the most sexually dimorphic Grueter and van Schaik The folivorous diet of colobines rarely leads to aggressive food competition between females, and between-group encounters involve mainly males, who appear to be defending mates. Unlike Asian colobine males, however, male guerezas Colobus guereza ; Figure 4 and ursine colobus C. Indeed, female ursine colobus seem to evaluate males based on how well they fight Teichroeb et al.

Figure 4 All colobines, here an East African guereza Colobus guereza , include leaves as a major dietary component. Infanticide, a dramatic expression of male-male competition, has been reported in several colobines but is apparently absent in some populations and species. Killing another male's offspring can be an adaptive reproductive strategy if the infanticidal male is not the father and if females become sexually receptive sooner than they would have otherwise and then mate with the infanticidal male.

Strong support for this sexual-selection explanation comes from gray langurs and ursine colobus C. In Thomas's langur Presbytis thomasi , infanticide by extra-group males may induce females without infants to transfer with the infanticidal males to smaller groups Wich and Sterck Though the numbers of genera are comparable, cercopithecines are generally more ecologically flexible, widespread, and well-studied than colobines. They include both arboreal and semi-terrestrial forms and inhabit the greatest variety of habitats of any major primate group.

Of the two cercopithecine tribes, Papionini , which includes macaques Macaca , baboons Papio , geladas Theropithecus gelada , mandrills and drills Mandrillus , and mangabeys Cercocebus , Lophocebus , Rungwecebus , is generally better-studied, especially those taxa that are common and relatively easy to observe, such as savannah baboons living semi-terrestrially in open habitat.

In contrast, it can be a challenge to follow mangabeys and the many guenons Cercopithecus , Allenopithecus , Miopithecus of the Cercopithecini tribe through their dense forest habitats Cords in press.

Forest-dwelling species typically have more restricted geographic distributions than those living in open environments, though there are obvious exceptions, such as blue and DeBrazza's monkeys Cercopithecus mitis, Figure 5 ; C. The limited distributions of many forest-dwellers make them especially vulnerable to habitat destruction and hunting; two such species — the dryas monkey C.

Figure 5: Strong social bonds among female kin are typical in cercopithecines. Here, two blue monkey Cercopithecus mitis sisters engage in a grooming bout. Theropithecus gelada occupy high grasslands in Ethiopia, sleeping at night on cliffs. Photograph shows a one-male unit, the basal unit of their nested society. Macaques, the only Asian cercopithecines, are second only to Cercopithecus in number of species and to Homo in geographic range. Their African representatives, Barbary macaques Macaca sylvanus , are the only non-human primates north of the Sahara, and an introduced European population lives in Gibraltar.

This means that they eat meat and plant-based foods. Most monkeys eat nuts, fruits, seeds and flowers. Some monkeys also eat meat in the form of bird's eggs, small lizards, insects and spiders. Most monkeys live in trees, but there are some that live in savannas or mountain areas. Monkey tribes stay on the move to find food, so one location isn't home for very long.

Monkeys are very social creatures. Groups of monkeys are called missions, tribes, troops or cartloads. A troop will work together to take care of the young monkeys in the group. They also like to play, cuddle and protect each other. The strongest and largest of the male monkeys is the leader of the troop. In monkey genus groups that practice polygyny , the leader will mate with multiple females. The gestation periods for monkeys vary depending on the genus.

For example, the gestation for a rhesus monkey is days. Baboons have a similar gestation period of around days. Chimps, on the other hand, have a much longer gestation period of around days, according to the San Jose State University. That might make you think of Earth as the Planet of the Apes plus monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers, and lorises , but according to a large study published last month, those statistics are a little misleading.

And the places these animals call home are just as diverse. That more primates—crested capuchins, dwarf marmosets, red-bellied titis, sakis, uakaris, night monkeys, and so on—live in Brazil than anywhere else should come as no surprise.

The South American country is nearly as large as the United States, and within its borders lies 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, which accounts for more than half of all the rainforest left on earth. Unfortunately, Brazil allowed agriculture and timber operations to clear million acres of this prime primate habitat between and —the largest loss of forest over that period among the Big Four.

The next closest, Indonesia, lost half as much. Even more concerning, Brazil has recently shifted toward more environmentally exploitative government policies and looser conservation laws, which scientists suspect will lead to even more deforestation.

Mining dam collapses are dangerous for non-endangered primates, too. Twenty people died in when a large mine-tailings dam collapsed on the Doce River. Take the northern muriquis, the largest monkeys in the New World. Also known as wooly spider monkeys, they can grow to more than four feet tall, and people often hunt them for meat. Further, the large tracts of Atlantic forest they once inhabited have been sliced and diced to the point where only pockets of the monkeys remain.

But in recent decades, organizations like the Muriqui Institute for Biodiversity, the Pro-Muriqui Institute , and the National Institute of the Atlantic Forest have formed to give these monkeys a boost. While northern muriquis are still critically endangered , one population has risen from just 22 individuals to at least as of For a related Brazilian primate success story, check out my earlier piece on golden lion tamarins. Brazil is also capable of halting its deforestation habits and has done so in the past.

From to , the country reduced its rate of forest loss by a whopping 80 percent.