Howler Monkey facts 🐒 among largest 🐵 Very loud monkeys 🐒

#amazinganimals facts for kids
Howler monkeys are among the largest of the New World monkeys. They are famous for their loud howls, which can travel 5 km through dense rain forest. These monkeys are native to South and Central American forests. Threats include human predation, habitat destruction, and capture for pets or zoo animals. Fifteen species are recognized.
Howler monkeys have short snouts and wide-set, round nostrils. Their noses are very keen, and they can smell out food up to 2 km away. Their noses are usually roundish snout-type, and the nostrils have many sensory hairs growing from the interior. Like many New World monkeys, they have prehensile tails, which they use for picking fruit and nuts from trees. Unlike other New World monkeys, both male and female howler monkeys have trichromatic color vision. They have lifespans of 15 to 20 years.
Howler monkeys generally move quadrupedally on the tops of branches, usually grasping a branch with at least two hands or one hand and the tail at all times. Their strong prehensile tails are able to support their entire body weight. Fully grown adult howler monkeys do not often rely on their tails for full-body support, but juveniles do so more frequently.
Most howler species live in groups of six to 15 animals, with one to three adult males and multiple females.
As their name suggests, vocal communication forms an important part of their social behavior. They each have an enlarged basihyal or hyoid bone, which helps them make their loud vocalizations. Group males generally call at dawn and dusk, as well as interspersed times throughout the day. Their main vocals consist of loud, deep, guttural growls or "howls". Howler monkeys are widely considered to be the loudest land animals. The function of howling is thought to relate to intergroup spacing and territory protection, as well as possibly to mate-guarding.
These large and slow-moving monkeys are the only folivores of the New World monkeys. Howlers eat mainly top canopy leaves, together with fruit, buds, flowers, and nuts. Howler monkeys are also known to occasionally raid birds' nests and chicken coops and consume the eggs.