“It has, I think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuitions, and sensations,—similar passions, affections, and emotions, even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude, and magnanimity; they practise deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humour; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. The individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from absolute imbecility to high excellence.”
Thus wrote the famous naturalist Charles Darwin, author of the theory of evolution, in his book The Descent of Man, published in 1871. Darwin’s observations form an appropriate introduction to the New World monkeys, which are pictured and described here in the following pages. For, as he says, the attributes that man shares with all the higher animals are most evidently, and in by far the greatest degree, shared with those known as the primates, of which the monkey is one. To primates, as the name itself suggests, zoologists give the first place in the order of the animal kingdom. In doing so they recognize that it contains the most complicated and highly organized living creatures. Of the eleven major groups into which the primates can be divided, only two exist exclusively in the New World and are generally included in the term New World monkeys.
A more precise name is platyrrhini, which comes from two Greek words meaning flat- nosed, which, broadly, is a distinguishing characteristic of all the various kinds of New World monkeys. The Old World monkeys are also known by another name—catarrhini—which comes from two Greek words meaning curved- nosed, and describes the less flat and less widely separated nostrils evident in the primates of the Old World, as opposed to those of the New. It is generally believed that the catarrhini represent a higher stage of development in the evolution of life than their New World relatives, the platyrrhini. The latter show characteristics that the former have apparently “grown out of.” Yet, for all that, the platyrrhini represent a high form of life.
One of the features unique to the New World monkeys is their “fifth hand” as it is sometimes called—their prehensile, or grasping, tail, which none of the catarrhini possesses. Yet not all of the platyrrhini are so equipped either. The squirrel monkey, one of the most common of the New World monkeys, cannot grasp or hold anything with its tail, although its tail is long. The squirrel monkey is about ten inches in length from head to toe, and its tail is about fourteen inches long. It has a small expressive face and large eyes, and is arboreal in habit, like most of the platyrrhini.
the Amazon, and the scrub woodlands that edge the great savannas. It is omnivorous in diet, eating anything and everything—insects, spiders, small tree frogs, snails, fruit, eggs, and even birds. It travels in troops that tend to keep close-knit, no member straying very far from any other. There are six kinds of squirrel monkey found in South America. All are subspecies of Saimiri sciurea. The face is greenish white, the head dark grey or black, and the body greenish-golden in colour. The greenish-golden colouring is produced by fine hairs that are yellow at the base and black at the tips. arms and hands and feet are ruddy yellow, and the tail is grey with a black tip.
If any feature of the squirrel monkey is More appropriately, the Tupi Indians of the Amazon called the squirrel monkey saimiri, which in their tongue means only small monkey. Like all monkeys the squirrel monkey is acclimated to the tropics and to the hot moist tropical forests. It does not like cold, and physically cannot stand it. The greatest obstacle to keeping one in captivity is this sensitivity, and many of the thousands shipped out of the jungle die for this reason. Cold, dryness, or absence of sunlight for any prolonged period of time can prove fatal to these little monkeys.
Hardiness is less common in all the New World monkeys than it is in the Old World monkeys, some of which stand captivity reasonably well. At about the same time that the squirrel monkey and most other monkeys of the tropical forests are settling down for the night in theft various ways and protective conceahnents, one species is just starting out on its rounds.
Squirrel Monkeys Pictures
