Uakari: leap of faith

by Chadden Hunter for Amazon under the skin, 12 June 2007

Chadden Hunter is on the trail of the bald uakari, one of the world's rarest and least studied primates.

Uakaris rarely leave the top of the forest canopy which makes it particularly difficult for people to follow them. After days of hacking through forest, Chadden finally got to see uakaris making the most of their tree top homes.

To play or download Uakari big jumpers you need to enable JavaScript. How?

Uakaris needn't be red in the face about their jumping skills.

The uakaris social system is complex. Small foraging parties can join to form groups as big as 200. These aggregations can usually be heard before they are seen as they chatter and chirp their way through the forest moving from fruit tree to fruit tree.

Local people call the uakari 'English monkeys' because of their resemblance to sunburnt visitors. Their striking bright red head is thought to be a sign of fitness and health in the malaria ridden Amazon swamp forests.

As they mature, the males in particular grow large temporal muscles on their heads which enable them to open tough, unripe fruit. This creates what some scientists have called a 'butthead' appearance. With their bulbous head muscles resembling a glowing backside and their short stubby tail looking like a head, scientists have suggested they're a monkey built backwards, perhaps to disorientate predators such as Eagles.

Bald uakaris are highly endangered but are locally abundant in the Yavari river basin of northern Peru.

Researcher Felicity Egerton also had to search for glimpses of primates in the tree tops, when she went looking for kipunji: the new primates on the block.