Why is the woolly monkey endangered

A year after the six monkeys were released, two had been recaptured because they were struggling to adapt, spending too much time on the forest floor and unwilling to bond with their troopmates.

Two had gone missing. And two died within months — one after falling from a tree and another of mysterious causes. We think the problem may have been the location. The Huila nature reserve has enough fruit to feed the monkeys, but it gets quite cold there.

In low temperatures, your body uses a lot of energy to heat itself. Group cohesion was also low in this cohort, causing some individuals to break away from their group — a dangerous thing to do in the jungle.

But we need to keep trying. Their demise would have severe environmental consequences. Colombia does not have enough animal sanctuaries and zoos to house the thousands of primates recaptured from smugglers every year. They had been blown out to sea by an intense storm on the African coast. Floating on a raft of storm-tossed vegetation, they drifted to a new continent — South America.

Sounds like fiction, but fossil teeth discovered in the Peruvian Amazon confirm the tale! According to findings from paleontologist Mariano Bond and colleagues, the monkeys that thrive in the Americas today are the descendants of prehistoric primates fortunate enough to survive the journey. From tamarins to muriquis, the Americas are now home to at least 53 monkey species, or New World monkeys.

In Lima, Peru, Mittermeier asked Dr. Hernando de Macedo-Ruiz, then director of the natural history museum, about the monkey. He knew little about it, but, as a result of that conversation, they decided they should go look for it. Their plan came together in as a quickly assembled, bare-bones expedition. The group traversed the bumpy roads to the foothills in buses and on the back of trucks.

The police would stop us in every village wondering what we were up to because who on Earth would be going to such a remote area looking for a monkey?

At one point the team was on a truck that stopped to pick up some hunters. Mittermeier asked the hunters what they had in their bags, and one pulled out a monkey skin. It was undeniably a Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey, with its thick, gorgeous mahogany fur, white nose and yellow band along the tail. So it indeed still existed! Neotropical Primate Conservation. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Loading Comments Email Name Website.