Black Handed Spider Monkey example essay topic

401 words
The black-handed spider monkey lives in a range from Mexico to Panama. They currently have a critically endangered or endangered status according to the IUCN. These monkeys have a coat color of black to light buff. This is determined by the subspecies. The infants are born black and lighten up within the first 5 months. They grow to be 305 to 630 mm in height.

Their habitats include the evergreen rain forest, semidecidous forest and mangrove forest. Spider monkeys are arboreal and seldom come to the ground. Spider monkeys tend to feed off of a wide variety of fruits. Fruits make up almost 80% of their food.

They also eat young leaves, flowers and bark but on a limited occasion. Spider monkeys also feed of off insects. They normally consume their food from suspension and when food is scarce they from subgroups to look for food. Spider monkeys have an average life span of 27 years. Males are sexually mature at 60 months and females are mature at 48 to 60 months. Most of the ages of the females' first bit rht is 60-90 months and their birth interval is from 17 to 45 months.

At infancy spider monkeys carry their infants for 5 months then they begin to ride one their mother's back. The most widely used source of locomotion is quadrupedal walking and running, suspensory locomotion, and climbing. The black-handed spider monkey climbs and leaps more than other monkeys. The ratio of male to female is 1: 1.8. They live in medium sized groups according to size and composition. The sizes of their groups they roam with are from 1 to 20 with an average of 4.5.

The bleak-handed spider monkey has a home range of 1 to 1.5 square kilometers. Males have larger territotires while females and infants have smaller ones. Males are the only one to perform long calls. They can be heard fromm 200 meters away. Most black-handed spider monkeys live in the top canopy of trees.

They use many sleeping trees throughout the year. Most black-handed spider monkeys have little interaction with other primates. When instances our they normally ignore each other and other primates are not likely to provoke any competitive situations with spider monkeys.