swamp monkey

▪ primate

      small heavily built primate of the Congo River basin. It is dark olive in colour, with orange or whitish underside. The head and body length is about 450 mm (18 inches), and there is a somewhat longer tail; females weigh 3.7 kg (8 pounds) on average, males 6 kg. They live in groups of about 40, mainly in swamp forest, where they spend as much time on the ground as they do in the trees foraging for fruit and invertebrates. Swamp monkeys can swim and will jump into the water to escape predators.

      The swamp monkey is in many respects intermediate between the guenons (guenon) and the group consisting of baboons (baboon), mangabeys (mangabey), and macaques (macaque). The swamp monkey's skull resembles that of guenons, but, as with baboons and mangabeys, the female develops sexual swellings during estrus. The teeth possess characteristics of both groups. All of these primates belong to the Old World monkey family, Cercopithecidae.

* * *