The Rage Diaries

Don't let this be the last awesome monkey photo you see

Behold this awesome photo of the Central Park Zoo's Japanese Macaques playing in the snow! Don't you love looking at the Macaca fuscata? Doesn't it make your heart sing to know that these little guys are the most northern-dwelling monkeys around, living as they do 31-41 degrees north of the equator? Doesn't it thrill you to know that these guys have been observed inventing new behaviors and passing them on by imitation? Aren't you amused by the idea of coming here to pick up just enough monkey trivia to bluff your way through a primatologists' mixer?

Then help out. Today's awesome monkey photo comes to you courtesy of me. But I can't always be bringing you the hot monkey photo love. Pass on your monkey photo links. I will mention you by name. Won't you help?

My readers are awesome II

So today's awesome monkey photo comes to us courtesy of kyle, who passed on a picture of these Cotton-topped Tamarins, and told us that she works at the Museum of Science in Boston, where there's actually a whole family of tamarins. A whole family! And the biggest one weighs less than a pound. Can you stand it?

These little guys -- known formally as Saguinus oedipus oedipus -- range from Costa Rica to Colombia. And in keeping with Rage Diaries tradition, they're all co-parenting monkeys, with the father assisting at the birth and carrying the young around until it's feeding time. The parenting behavior is learned, not innate.

Oh, and this species is endangered too. Have you shown any love to your favorite conservation group lately? Do it for the monkeys.

If you've got a monkey photo source, hook me up and see your name in bold. I've got a whole separate weblog category for y'all now.

Edited to take care of a pronoun confusion problem on my end.

My readers are awesome

As some of you may have already read below, I have a call out asking readers to share with me the sites where they are getting their awesome monkey photos. I love the prosimians and simians. And anything that shakes up the notion that the Internet's all about disseminating cat photos is okay by me.

So mindyfromohio passed on a link to what is apparently a live camera trained on Japanese Snow Monkeys. I have no idea what any of the text is, but the photos of the monkeys bathing in the hot springs have rendered me helpless in the tractor beam of their awesomeness.

Pass on a monkey photo link, and I may write an entry kvelling about you too. Act now!

Name that monkey

Are these not the most adorable monkeys you have seen today? (And if not, where are you getting your monkey fix? Share!) They're, like, egalitarian, co-parenting Bolivian jungle monkeys, and they're currently lacking a species name.

You can bid for the chance to give these monkeys their scientific species name. Frankly, this seems like an excellent, albeit expensive, way to declare your eternal love for someone. I dig it. The other cool aspect of the auction is that it could be an excellent way for preservation groups to raise money to keep said species from getting wiped out by encroaching urban blight. ("To Protect Wildlife, Play 'Name That Primate,'" CSM, Feb 24, 05)

For a timely article on taxonomy and species-naming, read the NYT's Feb 20, 05, Week in Review piece, "Ba Humbugi! Let's Nameus That Specieus!" Or drill deep into the subject with the site "The Curiosities of Binomial Nomenclature." The taxonomic puns alone are worth the time.