bbc.co.uk navigation

Woolly monkey carrying a baby on its back through the trees

Common woolly monkey

Common woolly monkeys have a sturdy prehensile tail, which they use to hang from branches and occasionally to pick things up. When they descend from the trees to the ground - not a common occurrence - they sometimes walk bi-pedally on their hind legs.

Scientific name: Lagothrix lagotricha

Rank: Species

Common names:

  • Brown woolly monkey,
  • Humboldt's Woolly Monkey

Watch video clips from past programmes (2 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

Distribution

Map showing the distribution of the Common woolly monkey taxa

Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

The Common woolly monkey can be found in a number of locations including: Amazon Rainforest, South America. Find out more about these places and what else lives there.

Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Common woolly monkey distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

Rainforest Rainforest
Rainforests are the world's powerhouses, the most vital habitats on the planet. Characterised by high rainfall, they only cover 6% of the Earth across the tropical regions, but they contain more than half of its plant and animal species.

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web

Conservation Status

Vulnerable

  1. EX - Extinct
  2. EW
  3. CR - Threatened
  4. EN - Threatened
  5. VU - Threatened
  6. NT
  7. LC - Least concern

Population trend: Decreasing

Year assessed: 2008

Classified by: IUCN 3.1

About

The brown woolly monkey or common woolly monkey or Humboldt's Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha) is a woolly monkey from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. It lives in groups of 2 to 70 individuals, usually splitting the group into smaller subgroups while in activity.

Many published sources give the systematic name as L. lagothricha, because Fooden chose that spelling as the correct spelling, when he revised the genus. Von Humboldt used both spellings in his original description, so the International Zoological Code permits a first reviser to choose the spelling that is to be considered the "correct spelling".

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

Classification

  1. Life
  2. Animals
  3. Vertebrates
  4. Mammals
  5. Primates
  6. Atelidae
  7. Lagothrix
  8. Common woolly monkey

More …

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.