Critically Endangered
Yellow-tailed woolly monkey
Lagothrix flavicauda
The yellow-tailed woolly monkey is a New World monkey endemic to Peru.
Appearance
The yellow-tailed woolly monkey is comparable in size to the common woolly monkey, that also belongs to the genus Lagothrix. The species is characterized by longer and denser fur than other woolly monkeys—an adaptation to the cold montane forest environments it inhabits. Its coat is a deep mahogany or copper color, with a whitish patch on the snout that extends from the chin to between the eyes.
Adult head-and-body lengths range from 51.3 to 53.5 cm (20.2 to 21.1 in), with tails extending up to 63 cm (25 in), often longer than the body.
Range and habitat
Their habitat is characterized as rough terrain consisting of steep mountain sides and deep river gorges, with canopy heights of 20–25 m (66–82 ft). Cloud forest, the habitat of this monkey, are in high altitudes and often have cloud coverage near or in them. The current the yellow-tailed monkey usually lives in fragmented due to deforestation, as is the population.
This pioneering work by the Peruvian NGO APECO led to the creation of three protected areas, Rio Abiseo National Park, Alto Mayo Protected Forest, and Cordillera de Colán National Sanctuary. Conservation efforts led by ASPROCOT have been made recently to help protect the endangered monkeys by turning to alternative forms of agriculture to preserve the remnants of the Amazonas forests.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Its diet is primarily frugivorous, but leaves, flowers, insects and other invertebrates are also eaten. The species is arboreal and diurnal.
Geophagy is a rare biological behavior, but the species benefits since it results in trace mineral intake of minerals and reduction of intestinal parasites. They tend to suffer from an iron-deficient diet. Their consumption of soil allows them to intake iron that they do not get from their regular diet.
In crisis
Even so, the construction of new roads, habitat loss and fragmentation from agriculture, logging and cattle ranching, and subsistence hunting, together with the monkey's naturally low population densities, slow maturation, and low reproductive rate, have led to a predicted decline of at least 80% over the next three generations. This and its restricted geographic distribution have led to this species' current critically endangered status. The species is considered one of "The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates".
Habitat loss by deforestation is the biggest threat to the endangerment of yellow-tailed woolly monkeys. The Lima-Tarapoto highway that runs through the regions of San Martin and Amazonas has caused the immigration of people from coastal and high mountain regions leading to overpopulation.
Yellow-tailed woolly monkey is Critically 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 Yellow-tailed woolly monkey, Wikidata item Q56054911. 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.
