Endangered
Peruvian spider monkey
Ateles chamek
Peruvian spider monkey is a New World monkey in the family Atelidae (order Primates) — Ateles chamek, recorded as Endangered.
The New World monkey
The Peruvian spider monkey weighs up to 9 kilograms (20 pounds). Its body can be 70 cm (28 in) long and the tail can be 1 m (40 in) long.
Range and habitat
The species occurs in central-northern of Bolivia, north-eastern Peru, and the central-western Brazilian Amazon. The species was recently found to occur in the northern bank of Solimões River, at the Mamirauá Reserve, where it probably colonized through a river meander cutoff process.
Reintroduction efforts by researchers at Reserva Ecologica Taricaya have begun along the lower Madre de Dios river where conservation efforts now provide a suitable release site and protected habitat.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Individuals of this species also eat small animals, insects and leaves based on availability.
In crisis
Peruvian spider monkeys live in groups of 20–30 individuals, but these groups are rarely all together simultaneously. Typically, males exhibit ranging over longer distances than females, with movement of individuals enhancing the fluidity of subgroup size. The IUCN experts claim that the number of individuals has declined by at least 50% over the past 45 years.
This decline is partially due to the fact that these monkeys are targeted by hunters for sale and consumption in the Amazonian bushmeat trade. In Peru, illicit extraction of timber and wildlife products remain issues even in protected areas.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Peruvian spider monkey is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Peruvian spider monkey, Wikidata item Q280520. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
