Black-handed spider monkey (click image to enlarge)

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These incredibly agile monkeys live throughout Central America. They’re very social, swinging through the treetops in groups of 20 or 30, munching on fruit, leaves, and flowers. They’re important distributors of fruit seeds, dispersing them through their digestive system. Unfortunately, the black-handed spider monkey is endangered due to habitat loss.

White-handed gibbon (click image to enlarge)

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The white-handed gibbon, also known as the lar gibbon, is an endangered rainforest ape that lives in southeast Asia, from Sumatra and Malaysia to Myanmar, Thailand, and possibly part of China, although they’re likely extinct in that country. These gibbons are endangered because of their popularity in the pet trade, but especially because of deforestation and the disappearing rain forests.

I’m considering adding a small feature to the Daily Mammal sidebar in which I keep a running list of my favorite new-to-me biology words. In addition to crepuscular, fossorial, scansorial, pelage, tragus, and amberat, we now have brachiation: the act of traveling by swinging from branch to branch, something that white-handed gibbons are extremely good at. They are so good at it, in fact, that you should marvel at their brachiatory (I made that one up) skills by watching this video from ARKive. I love how they fall down through the treetops, making a giant crash through the leaves and hooking onto the next branch at the last second.

Just recently, gibbon researcher Thomas Geissmann published a paper in which he described a rare and lovely discovery: a captive female white-handed gibbon had mastered the use of a tool, specifically a musical instrument, or rather more specifically, a slamming door that she used as a musical instrument. White-handed gibbons (and other gibbons) are known for their haunting songs, which they sing in male-female duets. At the same place in her song each time she sang it, this particular gibbon would punctuate the melody with a percussive bang from the wooden door to her sleeping box. She almost never sang the song without the slam, and she almost never slammed the door when she wasn’t singing. You can read more about her and listen to her song (complete with the slam) in this BBC article. (Check out their caption for her portrait: “The all-singing, door-slamming, female white-handed gibbon.” It’s got a rhythm to it.)

Emperor tamarin (click image to enlarge)

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I have two things I’d like to share with you about the emperor tamarin (also known as the emperor marmoset). First, according to Mammals—Their Latin Names Explained by A.F. Gotch,

“A taxidermist, so the story goes, had never seen a live tamarin and twisted the white ‘moustache’ upwards to look like the Emperor of Germany, instead of letting it droop in the natural position. It thus acquired the name Emperor Tamarin as a joke, but the name stuck, and the Latin name became established as Saguinus imperator.”

Second, check out this clip from a BBC series called Clever Monkeys, in which we learn about the mother emperor tamarin’s cunning use of mannies, and then have a good weekend:

Olive Baboon (click image to enlarge)

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The olive baboon lives in a wide swath of land across the middle of Africa. It’s one of those rare mammals that not only is safe from extinction, but whose numbers seem to be growing. Let’s all celebrate that ’cause it gets depressing around here, doesn’t it?

Papio in the baboon’s scientific name comes from a French word for baboon (according to A.F. Gotch, whom you may or may not believe). Anubis, of course, is the Egyptian god of the afterlife who has the head of a jackal. I’m guessing that anubis in this monkey’s name is a reference to the way baboons’ snouts resembles those of dogs.

On the other hand, whoever named Papio anubis may have been thinking of the lofty status baboons held in ancient Egypt. They were kept as pets (and possibly fruit pickers or other kinds of workers), depicted in art, and mummified in tombs. Supposedly, the Egyptians used their feces as an ingredient in aphrodisiacs. The Egyptian religion associated baboons with the sun god, perhaps because of the raucous ruckus they make at dawn, as well as with the afterlife. Baboons also represented the god Thoth, who was in charge of writing, wisdom, and judging the dead, as well as Hapy, the god of the Nile. The Egyptian god Babi has the head of a baboon. He’s vicious and bloodthirsty and lives on entrails and souls. Our word baboon may come from his name. Interestingly, it’s not known whether baboons were native to Egypt at that time or they were imported from Nubia.

Although it appears ancient Egyptian baboons were respected in theory, analysis of mummified baboon remains indicates that the monkeys were malnourished and kept in too-small cages.

Here is an ancient Egyptian baboon statue at the British Museum, along with some information about baboons and Egypt, and here’s another at the Metropolitan Museum.

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I love words and names for things, and I’ve enjoyed learning a little Latin and Greek as I draw these mammals. Let’s spend a few days meeting some mammals with interesting scientific names, starting with this wild-and-woolly tamarin. The cotton-top part of his common name is apt, but what about Saguinus oedipus? Saguinus means “like a squirrel monkey,” which is straightforward. The oedipus part is interesting, though. Literally, it means “swollen-footed,” and these monkeys were probably named for their big feet. But of course we think of Oedipus, too, and the complex named after him, and it seems that after the fact, at least one research study has found that the name Saguinus oedipus was appropriately oedipal in the oedipus-complex sense, too: in 2004, A.J. Ginther and C.T. Snowdon presented “The Oedipal Conflict in Saguinus oedipus” at the American Society of Primatologists’ yearly conference.

I would have named this monkey Madmaxus tinaturnerus, for that resemblance is, I feel, obvious. The German name for the cotton-top tamarin is Lisztäffchen, a diminutive form of the name Liszt, and that seems appropriate, too. Which of these famous musicians do you think the tamarin most resembles?

(Tamarin photos by Nuno Barretto and Dan Jordan; used under Creative Commons licenses.)

click image to enlarge

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Here’s one last Coffee Achiever: the Formosan rock macaque, who eats coffee berries and spits out the pits, like you and I would do with cherries. Supposedly, people roast the spit-out coffee beans and sell the coffee for big bucks. I’m just glad to know that someone appreciates having the monkeys around for some reason. Here are some excerpts from news articles about these Taiwanese macaques from the past decade:

Representatives of villagers in Jiayi, Taiwan Province, are negotiating with the local government to let them catch a bunch of mischievous monkeys, which have been causing havoc in five neighboring villages.

The monkeys have bitten newborn piglets to death and chased after frightened children.

The monkeys have even picked fruit and wastefully thrown them everywhere. Villagers have failed in their attempts to scare the monkeys away, and have asked the government to approve a crack monkey-catching team to help them deal with this monkey madness. (China Daily, 2007)

Farmers in southern Taiwan have reported that Formosan macaques, a protected primate species, are becoming so outrageous that they are now milking goats, a local evening newspaper reported yesterday.

The paper quoted Tsai Fu-ching, chief of Tsaishan Li in Kaohsiung City, confirming the reports.

Tsaishan residents said that they have often seen the monkeys milking goats in the past, adding that they tended to appear in the morning and would hang around with the goats in order to steal their food. Not satisfied with this petty larceny, they then grab the goats’ teats and milk them.

Tsai said that the goats do not resist and do not seem alarmed by the monkeys, possibly because they are so used to their presence. (Taipei Times, 2001)

The farmers complained that the monkeys take their fruit, ravage farmland, and even sometimes harass women and children. (Taipei Times, 2004)

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Okay, mammals, I’m back! And I have an announcement. I’m starting a Daily Mammal Book Club. Any mammals who want to join are welcome (at least, the ones that can read). We’ll read a book together and discuss it here on the Daily Mammal.

Let’s have the first discussion of the first book the week of March 16. That gives everyone a couple-few weeks to get the book. And the book is My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, which is $10 on Amazon. Here is Amazon’s description of it:

“When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.”

I’m about halfway through it, and while it actually has very few mammals—just the puppies and bats mentioned above, so far—it is full of hilarious characters and beautiful places. I think it will be fun to discuss it with you, and I hope you’ll join in! I will give more details about how it’ll work in the coming weeks.

To celebrate My Family and Other Animals, here is a Diana monkey! Like my sister-in-law Diana, the Diana monkey shares its first name with the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon (Artemis in Greek myths). Far as I can tell, the monkey gets its name because the crescent of white fur on its head is reminiscent of the shape of the moon, the goddess’ headband, or a huntress’ bow. It lives in a small part of Africa that overlaps Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana. It has to be one of the most beautiful of the mammals, I think, with its crisp white-and-black fur and orange eyes.

My sister-in-law Diana is getting this drawing for her birthday in a few weeks. The surprise is spoiled.