Geoffroy’s
Spider Monkey
Presented by:
Spider Monkey
- Introduction
- Spider Monkey description
New world monkeys, such as the Spider monkey are more primitive than are old world monkeys. Their brains are less complex, their thumbs are not opposable and their nostrils are further apart. They have slender bodies and limbs with long narrow hands. The black-handed spider monkey has a light to medium brown body and darker limbs with the hands and feet usually black in color. Their tail is sometimes longer than their body.
The Spider monkey has a prehensile tail that is muscular and tactile and is used as an extra hand. Both the underside and tip of the tail are used for climbing and grasping. When swinging by the tail, the hands are free to gather food. Both acrobatic and swift, Spider monkeys move through the trees, with one arm stride covering up to 40 feet.
Spider monkeys live in evergreen rainforests, semi deciduous and mangrove forests, from Southern Mexico to Brazil. They almost never come to the ground, remaining up in the upper canopy, preferring undisturbed high forest.
Spider monkeys live in medium-sized, loosely associated groups of about 30 individuals, which fragment into subgroups of varying smaller sizes and composition. Since their thumb is absent, the Spider monkey's grooming is not as developed as in other primates. They scratch themselves with hands and feet, but most of their social grooming is mothers grooming their young.
A female is able to give birth between the ages of 4 to 5 years old, with an estrus cycle of 26 days. The birth interval is 17 to 45 months. Males are sexually mature at the age of 5 years. After a gestation period of 226-232 days, one entirely black baby is born. The mother continuously carries the baby, clinging to her and at about 5 months of age it will begin riding on her back. It will be dependent on its mother's milk for 2 years. Their lifespan in the wild is about 27 years.
Spider monkeys are fruigivorous preferring a diet of 90% fruit and seeds, feeding on the mature soft parts of a wide variety of fruits in which the seeds are swallowed along with the fruit. They also eat young leaves, flowers, aerial roots, sometimes bark and decaying wood, as well as honey.
Spider monkeys use several different types of locomotion: quadrupedal, using all four limbs for locomotion as seen while walking or running; suspensory locomotion used when hanging, climbing or moving through the trees and bipedalism, using only two limbs when leaping.
- LA Zoo Spider Monkeys
The Los Angeles Zoo houses 4 Geoffroy’s Spider Monkeys.
- Ben, the only male of the group (Acquired: Feb. 1977)
- Cocoa, the oldest female (Born: Aug. 27, 1978)
- Zuni, older sister of Zebon (Born: Jan.8, 1996)
- Zebon, sister of Zuni and the youngest of the group (Born: Mar. 15, 1998)
The enclosure at the LA Zoo is approximately 25-30 feet by 15-20 feet in length. The enclosure is equipped with tree limbs to rest on and ropes to swing about.
- Problem
Although Spider monkeys are active primates, as a group we wanted to discover if the Spider monkeys at the LA Zoo spent more time resting or being bored rather than in an active state. If we noticed a continual pattern of behavior from our research, then we could conclude that there is a lack of stimulation or enrichment.
- Material and Methods
- Methods used to collect data
Our group is composed of 4 observers, which collected a total of 32 hours of data on the LA Zoo’s Spider monkeys. The data was conducted from November 09, 2002 through December 02, 2002.
Scan samples were used to collect the data. Each behavior was recorded on the time sheet according to the time and distance it was observed. The time between each scan, depending on the observer, was either 1 or 3 minutes. The behaviors were recorded whether they were new or re-occuring. Each observer had with them a timesheet, pencil, notepad, timer, and patience.
- Ethogram
The Spider monkeys’ behaviors were divided into 12 categories, defined below. According to the scans, one of these behaviors were observed and then recorded on the timesheet.
