A Monkey that blushes when it is angry is the uakari, which also enjoys the distinction of being the only one of the New World monkeys to possess a short tail, a. feature fairly common in the Old World monkeys. The uakari is a cat-sized monkey with a well-developed brain and superior intelligence. Its favoured habitat is among the high places of the forests, through which it travels on streets and avenues of crossing and intertwining limbs, vines, and branches.
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The spider monkey is a true monkey. It has nails on its toes and fingers and it possesses a tail that is prehensile and in many ways more useful to it than its hands or feet. The spider monkey’s tail is its most extraordinary possession. It is longer than the monkey’s body is—over two feet in length in an adult, and composed of twenty-three vertebrae, which give it suppleness and strength. It is longer and narrower than any of the monkey’s other limbs and can be used to reach farther and into smaller places than can the animal’s arms and legs. The monkey can hang by it, swing by it, pick fruit with it, even throw things with it.
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Marmosets belong to the family Callithricidae, as opposed to the true monkeys, which belong to the family Cebidae. Yet marmosets have been described by one eminent naturalist as “the most perfectly adapted of all Primates for arboreal existence.”
Their movements are quick and jerky, and are carried out with such suddenness that they can disappear in the blink of an eye. This, actually, is the only defense they need against a stronger adversary with whom one may find itself suddenly confronted. Its tactic is to stare at its enemy and hope that, while the latter is trying to make up its mind how to attack, some momentary distraction may catch its eye for a second. In that second the marmoset will have leaped to new cover and safety.
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The Douroucouli monkey or Aotes is unique among the New World monkeys in being the only one that is truly nocturnal—night living. Uniqueness in nature is not a matter of chance or caprice, as it may sometimes seem to man, but is the result of selection and specialization for survival. In the douroucouli it is the eyes that are specialized: too sensitive to be exposed for long to the full light of day, but so sensitive that even in full darkness it can see such tiny objects as insects, one of its sources of food.
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“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.”
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