Critically Endangered
Roloway monkey
Cercopithecus roloway
The Roloway monkey is an endangered species of Old World monkey endemic to tropical West Africa.
Appearance
Of this genus, it is most similar to C. Diana. They both have dark fur surrounding a majority of their bodies, with a dark brown-reddish patch on their lower back. The Roloway monkey has a prominent white beard under its black chin, and above its dark eyes is a horizontal white stripe of fur, directly on its brow bone. Its face is a dark black, accentuated by the bright white fur covering its shoulders and chest.
Not many body measurements of adult Roloway monkeys are available, but through analysis, but compared to the Diana monkey, the Roloway monkey's body length ranges from 40 to 55 cm (16 to 22 in), and the tail ranges from 50 to 75 cm (20 to 30 in) long. Male monkeys weigh about5.0 kg (11.0 lb).
Range and habitat
The species occurs in a small area of eastern Ivory Coast and the forests of Ghana, between the Sassandra and Pra Rivers and may occur in Burkina Faso and Togo. The Roloway monkey inhabits the canopy of secluded, old-growth forests, among them gallery forests, in moist, low-lying regions, and avoids but can make use of forests that have been lightly logged. Primary forests have unique attributes that can allow populations of animals and plants to be more stable in the long term.
The Roloway monkey is mainly an arboreal species, for the most part inhabiting forests in Ghana and some reserves in south-eastern Côte-D'Ivoire.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Because insects are included in its diet, the Roloway also can be described as insectivorous. The diet of the Roloway monkey has been observed for quite some time. Presumably, the monkey varies its diet in accordance with the season.
When hunting for food, the Roloway monkey looks for the most direct path and may not choose to swing, climb, or jump from branch to branch if it is not the most efficient means of food collection. Roloway monkeys typically are diurnally active only, so spend the night sleeping high in the canopy, similar to other primates. Males mate with females during a 3-day estrus.
In crisis
The species is classified as critically endangered due to habitat loss and their continued hunting because of the bushmeat trade. More specifically, C. Roloway is primarily concentrated in the Tanoé Forest of the Côte-D'Ivoire because of their heavy threats to extinction and lack of habitat. Gathering data on wild subjects is still difficult, as they have low and vanishing populations in a vast forest, but they are a unique species.
The Roloway monkey was assessed as an endangered species by the IUCN in 2008. As their population continued to rapidly decline, and the hunting and habitat loss continued, the species was moved up to critically endangered, so conservation is more needed than ever.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Roloway 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 Roloway monkey, Wikidata item Q636075. 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.
