All you need to know about the Colobus Monkey

November 29th 2007.

Perhaps the biggest star of Kilimanjaro, the Colobus monkey is the most gorgeous of those species that call the mountain home. Easily distinguished by their beautiful coat of black and white and bushy, pendulous tail, it comes as something of a surprise to find that such a pretty creature actually derives its name from the Greek word for ‘mutilated’. The reason why it is saddled with such an unfortunate moniker can be found in its hands, because unlike virtually every other primate the colobus monkey is lacking a thumb.

There are a number of different species of colobus in Africa, with several living in East Africa including the rare red colobus monkey. The proper name for the species that lives on Kilimanjaro is the Eastern black and white, distinguishable from its Angolan cousin by the U-shaped cape of white hair running from the shoulders to lower back.

Despite its striking costume and the large numbers present on Kilimanjaro, the colobus is not necessarily easy to spot. This is because they rarely descend to the ground, and are in fact the most arboreal of all the monkeys in Africa, preferring to remain in the trees where they use the branches as trampolines, jumping up and down on them to get liftoff for leaps of up to 50 feet. Some believe that their hair and tails act as a parachute during these long leaps.

Indeed, you are more likely to hear them and see them, the adult males making a weird broken klaxon call that echoes through the forest. These calls are used to define and defend their territory, which a dominant male shares with several females and their young in troops of 10-15. Newborn colobus are white in colour, the black markings only appearing about a month after birth, with the full black-and-white colouring only fully present after three months.

As is common amongst tree-dwelling monkeys, the infant clings to the fur on its mother’s abdomen during the first few months. For food, they chew on the leaves of the trees, their hardy stomachs enabling them to digest foliage that other monkeys cannot.

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