Go Bananas on the MiniMonos Virtual World for Kids: Monkey Fact Monday: Geoffroy's Spider Monkey

07/26/2010

Monkey Fact Monday: Geoffroy's Spider Monkey

Welcome to another Monkey Fact Monday! Did you know that primates and monkeys have fingerprints just like we do? Some monkeys even have fingerprints on the end of their tails! One of these monkeys is the spider monkey :-)

While reading about monkey fingerprints I stumbled upon some really cool facts about a certain kind of spider monkey - the Geoffroy's Spider Monkey! These spider monkeys are also known as Black Handed Spider Monkeys. You can find them in Central America, parts of Mexico & Columbia because they're a type of New World Monkey, like those really noisy Howler Monkeys!

They are arboreal, which means they live most of their lives up in the trees. Their tail is prehensile and has a "palm-like pad" at the end of it where their fingerprint (tailprint?) is!

Their tails can support their full weight and makes it really easy for them to get around in the trees, which is good for them because their diet is mostly fleshy fruit and leaves. They have been known to eat insects, flowers, bark, honey and bird eggs as well. Yum yum!

One of the coolest things about the Geoffroy's Spider Monkey is that in the wild they sometimes spread a mix of their saliva and ground lime leaves on their fur. People think this could be their way of repelling bugs! I bet they hate getting bug bites as much as you or I do :-) Do you think chewing on Lime Tree leaves would be worth it, though?

Hope you enjoyed this week's Monkey Fact Monday! Don't forget that next week you could see your facts in the next Monkey Fact update! Please send us any cool or funny or interesting facts that you may find and want to share!

Awesome monkey facts from wikipedia.org Photograph by Lea Maimone.

Posted by Manx at 10:20:33 PM in Games, Monkey content