Animal · Mexico, Guatemala, Belize
Black-handed spider monkey
Ateles geoffroyi — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The black-handed spider monkey is a long-limbed monkey of Central American rainforests whose tail works like a fifth hand. It swings through the treetops on hooked fingers and has almost no thumb at all.
Picture credit: Thomas Hirsch (CC0) · Thomas Hirsch (CC0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the black-handed spider monkey live?
Home: Treetops of tropical rainforest in Central America.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama.
Conservation status from the IUCN: endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown: 40-60 cm long, plus a tail of up to 85 cm. It weighs about 7.5 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A spider monkey looks like a bundle of arms and legs on a small body, with a tail longer than the rest of it. The last part of that tail is bare underneath, with ridged skin rather like a fingerprint, and it is strong enough to hold the whole animal while both hands pick fruit. The hands are hooks more than grippers: the fingers are long and curved and the thumb is barely there. Spider monkeys spend almost their whole life high in the canopy, eating mostly ripe fruit, and live in large groups that split into small parties to search different trees. They are endangered today, because their forest is being cleared and a mother raises only one young every few years.
Find it on the globe
Black-handed spider monkey is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why is it called a spider monkey?
Because of the way it looks when it hangs from a branch: long thin arms, long legs and a long tail all spreading out from a small body, rather like the legs of a spider.
What does a spider monkey use its tail for?
The tail is a fifth limb. It curls round branches, holds the monkey's whole weight while it feeds with both hands, and can even hook a piece of fruit that is out of reach.
Is the black-handed spider monkey endangered?
Yes, it is listed as endangered. Its rainforest is being cleared for farms and roads, and because a mother raises only one young every few years, a group that loses animals recovers very slowly.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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