Posts tagged as:

monkey

Common Marmoset (Callithrix jacchus)

by JR Kinyak on September 18, 2011

in Primates

Common marmoset (click image to enlarge)

Common marmoset by Coco, age 12

0384

Like many people, some of us Kinyaks are addicted to Angry Birds. The last edition we played, Angry Birds Rio, is a tie-in with the animated movie Rio, which I haven’t seen and don’t plan to, but I assume the characters in the game come from the movie. While the original Angry Birds game has pigs as the birds’ enemies, in Rio, your enemies are marmosets, and after flinging little birds at them, I decided to draw one.

The common marmoset is also known as the white-tufted-ear marmoset. It’s endemic to the forests of eastern Brazil. I’ve just learned a new biology word, and you probably know that learning new biology words is one of my favorite parts of the Daily Mammal. The common marmoset is both an exudativore and an insectivore. That second one is obvious (it eats bugs). The first was new to me. Exudativores make tree sap, resin, and gums a major part of their diet. Common marmosets gnaw into the bark of a tree and then scoop out the sap or what have you with their teeth. About 70 percent of their food-finding time is spent on tree saps and the rest on insects.

Tagged as: coco, monkey, words

{ 4 comments }

Japan Benefit: ニホンザル (Japanese Macaque) (Macaca fuscata)

by JR Kinyak on March 30, 2011

in Mammalthons,Primates

This week’s drawings, by me and by Coco, are for sale to benefit animals and people affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan! If you buy a drawing, we’ll give half of the purchase price to the American Red Cross and half to Animal Refuge Kansai, an animal shelter in Japan. You can select a matted drawing or leave it unmatted. Unmatted, they’re 6″x9″ in colored pencil and marker on vellum. The mats are 9″x12″ and black. On to today’s monkey!

Japanese macaque (click image to enlarge)


0372

This drawing has sold!

The Japanese macaque is also called the snow monkey. They’re the guys you see relaxing in hot tubs and hot springs like this:

(That photo, as you no doubt noticed, is from National Geographic.) I wish there were Japanese macaques at Ten Thousand Waves, our local Japanese-style spa. It would be the perfect addition for the transporting atmosphere. Except I can imagine that they’re pretty noisy, and that might not be relaxing. Here’s a pretty fascinating article about why the macaques started hanging out in hot tubs, along with why they started playing with rocks and washing their sweet potatoes and wheat. The big trendsetter there was an 18-month-old baby girl monkey!

Here is Coco’s Japanese macaque. You should consider buying it to help Japan: all her other drawings have sold out. Collectors are lining up, people.

Japanese macaque by Coco, age 12 (click image to enlarge)

Coco’s drawing has sold!

My Japanese squirrel is still available for sale, too, and if you’re not big on art but you’d like to help the American Red Cross and Animal Refuge Kansai, consider clicking the button below. We’ll put your contribution into our fund.

Tagged as: coco, humans, japan, monkey

{ 0 comments }

Mating Week: Saddleback Tamarin (Saguinus fuscicollis)

by JR Kinyak on March 5, 2011

in Primates,Theme Weeks

Saddleback tamarin (click image to enlarge)


0356

I’ve decided to go ahead and call this an official theme week. This is the fifth and last entry in our Daily Mammal Mating Week. The saddleback tamarin, which lives in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, practices polyandry, which means that a single female mates with more than one male. (Polygamy technically refers to a marriage or partnership with more than two partners; polygyny means one male and two or more females. Other members of this tamarin’s taxonomic family also practice polyandry.)

A typical group of tamarins includes one mating female and at least two males, but they’re flexible about their family systems, and sometimes they’re in a monogamous pair accompanied by adolescent offspring or in a group that includes other, non-dominant females, whose ovulation is suppressed and who help take care of the dominant female’s babies, who are nearly always born in sets of twins. All the males take turns mating with the dominant female, and Walker’s Mammals of the World says that “tamarins generally display minimal intragroup aggression, with a marked degree of cooperation and tolerance, even by sexually active males towards one another.” It’s a nice system:

In Saguinus the father and sometimes other adult members of a group assist at birth, receiving and washing the young. The newborn have a coat of short hair and are helpless. They cling tightly with their hands and feet to the body of the mother or father. The father transfers the young to the mother at feeding time and then accepts them from the mother again after feeding…Several members of a group besides the mother and father may help carry and provision the young…

So that’s it for our Mating Week. In addition to today’s polyandrous group, we’ve visited a lek, a barbaric “rape society,” a monogamous pair, and a “big-bang” reproducer. We mammals find what works, and the diversity in that is pretty beautiful.

Tagged as: mating, monkey

{ 5 comments }

World Cup: Paraguay’s Black-and-Gold Howler Monkey (Alouatta caraya)

by JR Kinyak on July 1, 2010

in Primates,Theme Weeks

Black-and-gold howler monkey (click image to enlarge)


0333

We are approximately one-third of the way to 1,000 mammals today, which would be in turn one-fifth of the way to all the mammals there are. Let’s celebrate that, as well as the World Cup, with this sad-looking black-and-gold howler monkey from Paraguay! The black-and-gold howler is also called the black howler, but so is at least one other howler monkey species (dang! look how different my drawing was back then!), and since only the males are black anyway, a better common name for this one is the black-and-gold howler. They live not only in Paraguay but in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, as well, but their habitat is a patchwork of forests and not a big solid region. Good news for the black-and-gold howler: they are not endangered, and though their population seems to be decreasing, they’re good at living in disturbed forests and pretty adaptable.

Paraguay has made it to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, and will be playing against popular favorites Spain on Saturday. Most observers thought it was unlikely Paraguay would get this far, especially since one of their best scorers, Salvador Cabañas, was shot in the head in Mexico in January. He survived, but he’s still not well, and with his hospitalization, it seemed, Paraguay’s chances for success were dim. After dedicating their first-round games to their teammate, Paraguay’s team went on to eliminate Japan in the Round of 16 after the previously discussed penalty kick shootout. Also, the dumbest Paraguay World Cup news I keep seeing is that some lingerie model, famous for keeping her cell phone in her cleavage, has pledged to run naked through Asunción if her beloved la Albirroja wins.

Tagged as: monkey, World Cup

{ 1 comment }

World Cup: Group E

by JR Kinyak on June 29, 2010

in Carnivores,Marine Mammals,Primates,Rodents,Theme Weeks

European otter (click image to enlarge)

0328

Hi, mammals! I think I’ll be on track to finish the Mammals of the World Cup on schedule with the actual World Cup if I post all of Group E today and then get back to once-a-day tomorrow. (Whether I will succeed is still unknown, as life has been pretty stressful around here. But I’m trying!) Also, I’m really not doing my best work lately, so dumping four mammals on you at once might distract you from that fact.

Our first mammal is the European otter (Lutra lutra), who is representing the Netherlands, where its numbers had decreased to almost nothing but it has been reintroduced. The Netherlands beat Slovakia (where the Yak part of my name comes from) in the Round of 16 and will be playing Brazil in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Orca (click image to enlarge)

0329

The orca or killer whale (Orcinus orca) is playing for Denmark tonight. Did you know that orcas in groups have been known to take down blue whales? It’s unlikely, I think, that anyone is going to beat the orca in this World Cup. Denmark, on the other hand, didn’t make it out of the group stage.

Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (click image to enlarge)

0330

From Japan, the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga), which is also known as the momonga! It’s just too cute to be believed, really, and is also represented on one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, seen below. (I’m very into Yu-Gi-Oh! now. It comes with the 14-year-old son. I have a beast deck. Besides the Nimble Momonga, I also have a Tree Otter, a Sea Koala, a Kangaroo Champ, a Green Baboon Defender of the Forest, and a Rescue Cat.)

A very handy Yu-Gi-Oh! card (click image to enlarge)

Japan made it to the Round of 16 but lost to Paraguay today. After the group stage, they don’t allow ties anymore. First, they have 30 minutes of overtime, and if there’s still a draw, they take turns taking penalty kicks, which are kicks from a spot 12 yards from the goal. Five players from each team try that, and if there’s still a draw after the penalty kicks, they play sudden death. After the 30 minutes of extra time, the Japan-Paraguay game was tied 0-0, and Paraguay won in penalty kicks.

Allen's swamp monkey (click image to enlarge)

0331

This is Allen’s swamp monkey (Allenopithecus nigroviridis), and it’s from Cameroon (as well as Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Its scientific name means “Allen’s ape, black and green,” and it is indeed kind of black-and-green colored. Cameroon didn’t get out of the group stage at the World Cup.

Group E Results

Well, the killer whale is the killer whale, and none of these guys stand a chance against that apex predator. It moves on to the next round, and I think our mustelid friend in this group, the European otter, could do some damage to the swamp monkey, and obviously the momonga is adorable and tiny and hopeless against any of the other three. So the two mammals continuing on to the Round of 16 from Group E are:

Orca (Denmark)
and
European Otter (Netherlands)

Tagged as: monkey, otter, squirrel, whale, World Cup

{ 5 comments }

World Cup: Algeria’s Barbary Macaque (Macaca sylvanus)

by JR Kinyak on June 23, 2010

in Primates,Theme Weeks

Barbary macaque (click image to enlarge)


0322

The World Cup is swinging right along, and we’re celebrating with a look at the mammals of the 32 countries competing in the tournament. Today we’re in Algeria, where they have these monkeys, see, the Barbary macaques. They live in the forests of Algeria and Morocco, and there’s also a population in Gibraltar, making them the only primates that live freely in Europe other than humans. Male macaques have a most endearing bonding ritual. In order to make friends with other males, a male macaque will cuddle with a baby, his own or someone else’s. When one male is holding a baby, other males will approach him, embrace him, and make googoo faces at the infant alongside him. Males who do it right find that holding a baby can really help their social status. Isn’t that funny? But like human infants, baby macaques can be unrelenting when they cry, and the downside for the baby-holding males is that they experience higher stress levels than males who don’t hold babies.

Today Group C played its final two games in the World Cup. Each group’s last two games are played simultaneously because otherwise, teams that knew the outcome of an earlier game would have incentive to throw their own game in one way or another. FIFA started structuring the World Cup that way in 1986, and Algeria was involved in the events that caused the change. In 1982, Algeria “shocked the world” when they beat reigning champions West Germany. In their group, which also included Austria and Chile, it turned out that in the final game, if West Germany beat Austria, both teams would be guaranteed to continue on to the next round, while a different outcome would have sent Algeria on. So in “the dodgiest game in football history,” West Germany scored a goal very early on and the two teams spent the rest of the game fooling around while their fans booed and even burned a flag. Algeria complained, and while FIFA declined to do anything about it at the time, they did change the rules for the next World Cup.

This World Cup was only the third that Algeria made it to. They had their glory days in the 1980s, qualifying for both the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, but then they endured a long slump known as “the walk through the desert,” coming back into their own in 2008. Today Algeria, whose nickname is the Fennecs, lost to the U.S., and England beat Slovenia, and so the U.S. and England are continuing on to the Round of 16.

Coco drew such an amazing Barbary macaque:

Barbary macaque by Coco, age 11

Tagged as: coco, monkey, World Cup

{ 5 comments }

World Cup: South Africa’s Vervet Monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus)

by JR Kinyak on June 13, 2010

in Primates,Theme Weeks

Vervet monkey mother and child (click image to enlarge)

0312

The World Cup started this past Friday, and I’m into it, partly because of this Nike commercial and partly because of this book (Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah, which I enthusiastically recommend), which has me convinced of the importance of being a true citizen of the world. The international soccer/football tournament happens every four years, and this time, it’s in South Africa—the first time an African nation has hosted. Since I can’t go to South Africa, and I certainly can’t play soccer, what better way to participate than to draw one mammal from each of the 32 countries playing in the World Cup? I’ll be drawing them in the order their countries are playing, starting with our host, South Africa, and its representative, the vervet monkey.

The 32 teams of the World Cup are divided into eight groups, and they play a round-robin tournament after which the top two teams from each group advance to the round of 16. South Africa finds itself in a tough group, with former World Cup champions Uruguay and France, and Mexico, whose team isn’t bad, either. No host country has ever failed to advance to the second round of play—but South Africa, in its two previous World Cup appearances, didn’t get to round two, so this host-country winning streak could be a high-pressure curse.

On Friday, South Africa played Mexico. The game ended in a 1–1 draw, which wasn’t at all bad for South Africa, and the home team’s Sisphiwe Tshabalala scored the first goal of the tournament, a real beaut.

In our World Cup of Mammals, South Africa is represented by the vervet monkey, which lives in southern Africa’s savannas and forests in groups of a couple dozen. The vervet is also called the green monkey, and in Afrikaans, it’s the blou aap, or blue monkey, despite being yellowish-gray. Unfortunately, the old habitat squeeze has forced the vervet into the position of being a nuisance to humans in some places.

    Coco drew the most adorably charming vervet monkey ever.

    Vervet monkey by Coco, age 11

    Tagged as: coco, monkey, World Cup

    { 7 comments }

    ← Previous Entries