Brief Examination of the Venezuelan Capuchin Monkey

  The new found world monkeys, known as the capuchins otherwise classified as genus Cebus, are found mostly in Honduras, Middle Brazil, Venezuela, Eastern Peru and in Paraguay.
   Among these monkeys, Venezuelan capuchins seem to possess more human traits, including the ability to fend themselves from harmful insects and animals. Their most recognizable enemies are the mosquito, snakes, cats and large falcons.
    Capuchins are average in size, not up to the size of an African ape, but they look more decent and prettier. Covered with soft black or brown hairs, from head to foot. Looking at their face, it is white colored with some golden sprinkles of hair around the belly and chest, this gives the capuchins a very attractive look that attracted any tourist that comes across them.
   So friendly and gentle, the capuchins hate disturbances, especially from insects and other forest animals. They usually have pink eye color, looking somewhat like a cat-eye, all these contributes to their beauty. Capuchins also have a very well-arranged teeth, just like human, which they normally love to showcase whenever they see a stranger, especially, a female stranger, because they believed they can won admiration through that.
   Their diet looked more varied than other monkeys in their family group. They are omnivores, but consumed plant fruits, seeds, bud, but also ate birds, insects, eggs, spiders and even small vertebrates. This made their diet a complex one to compare with other monkeys in the family Cebidae.
     Capuchins can politely be referred as domestic animals, living in jungle forests, because they are also useful and friendly to man. Capuchins can be used as pet animals, for farming etc. they normally walked in groups, of either 6, 8 to a range of 40 members. Each group, comprises of females, offspringss and males, who seem to dominate the group, and held the sole right to mate any female member in it’s group.
     They are territorial in nature, and always defined their territories in a very distinctive way, in order to protect it against intruders, by the use of their urine.
      They also showed a sense of birth control, so their females bear new born, once in two years, after a gestation period of 160 to 180 days. And they also showed longevity in their existence, as some lived for up to 45 years, but the usual expected year of existence is 25 years at most.
   Capuchins are highly intelligent primate, with a wedge-capped head, measuring approximately 11-22 inches and weighing up to 1.4kg and they seem to live more in peace during the winter season more than in rainy seasons. This season always brought worries to their jungles, as merciless mosquitoes seem to increase during this season. This insect seemed to be a great nuisance to them, infecting them with diseases just like in humans, where it transmits malaria parasite.
    The mosquitoes often carry the eggs of a parasitic botfly, which can result to weakening, festering cysts when they are deposited beneath the capuchin monkey’s skin. But the capuchins try as much as they can, to overcome this seasoning threat. What do they do?
     In order to protect themselves from this onslaught, capuchins cover their bodies with a potent natural repellent (in the form of an insect repellent). This natural repellent which capuchins uses to cover themselves against insect attacks, does not actually come from them, it comes from jungle type specie of millipede.
     These millipedes secrets two compounds that are very effective against insects. Studies have shown that these secretions are even stronger than man-made repellent used by combating military men.
     Therefore, during rainy seasons, the wedge capped capuchins, hunt around in termite mounds, tree barks, looking for the jungle specie millipedes. When a capuchin finds one, it takes the millipede and rubs it all over itself, from head to toe. Capuchins make desperate search for these millipedes, which most times, makes them scarce, resulting to up to five capuchins, sharing a single millipede for protection.
      Capuchins are very concentrating when massaging themselves with the millipede, seting aside their usual pecking order, what an intelligent primate, the Venezuelan capuchins.
     Truly, the capuchin is wonderful monkey specie that every one that had love for monkeys must cherish on first sight of it.