A DESCRIPTIVE PROJECT
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What I Learned from my Observations
The
stomachs of spider monkeys are blond and the rest is black or slightly
brown. Spider monkeys are about the size
of a 5 year old human.
These
monkeys spend their time sleeping and having fun swinging around for no obvious
purpose. They groom themselves constantly, but hardly ever groom each other.
Spider monkeys can’t groom like apes, because they have no thumbs, and so just
groom by scratching of bugs, which does not work very well and takes a long
time. They are very curious and will play with garbage and other unnatural
things that they have in their habitat.
Spider
monkeys will scavenge for leaves, bark, stems, and roots of small bushes and
trees. They will very rarely eat the leaves, stems, bark, and roots of just one
tree, but instead will eat different parts of each different plant. They love
bananas and lots of other fruits. They will also eat small bugs, but they will
usually not look for bugs, they will just eat one if it is crawling on them or
near them.
In
this group of spider monkeys, they appeared to have an alpha monkey or
leader. In this case it was
Brownie. On a few occasions I saw other
monkeys give their bananas to her. When
visitors came bearing bananas and the monkeys were lined up waiting for the
fruit, I observed that they would step back when Brownie came up to the fence.
Spider
monkeys are able to leap a gap of nearly ten feet and when the spider monkeys
want to they can be very fast. If they are not swinging extremely fast they usually
will test the branch that they will be putting their weight on before they
actually do. The tail of a spider monkey is extremely important and they use
their tail for grooming, keeping balance, hanging from, swinging with, carrying
things and much more. It is not rare for a spider monkey to fall from a tree.
Spider
monkeys try to stay clean. They will clean out their teeth by chewing on leaves
and then spitting them out. If they get dirt on themselves they will also rub
it off.
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Meet the Monkeys!
Brownie Mohawkin Canopy Zach Granda Elder