Samango monkeys in the spotlight

South Africa, for all its wealth of mammal species, is quite poorly endowed with primates. Five of the primates that occur here are bushbabies and two – vervet monkeys and baboons – are often viewed as pests. The rarest and most attractive monkey found in our evergreen indigenous forests is the samango monkey, known further up in Africa as the Sykes or blue monkey. In South Africa, samangos are confined to the north- eastern part of the country, although their range does extend as far south as the forests of the Eastern Cape. Their diet consists mostly of plant material like fruit, leaves and flowers, and they form close-knit social groups of between 10 and 35 individuals. Each group is led by a dominant male. Where I live, on the forested slopes of the Blyde River Canyon in Limpopo, I can hear the booming, territorial calls of male samango monkeys daily. These calls are designed to help space groups evenly and avoid unnecessary confrontation. Females hardly ever leave their birth troop and because they are all closely related, there is no unnecessary competition for food resources. This accounts for their seemingly peaceful demeanour. The only other call these otherwise silent monkeys ever emit is a loud pyow, which normally indicates a nearby predator. Pythons and leopards will prey on samangos, but their nemesis is the crowned eagle, a forest denizen superbly adapted to hunting primates. It’s not uncommon to find samango skulls beneath a crowned eagle nest… The reason samango monkeys are regarded as rare is directly related to their fragmented and diminishing forest habitat. Forests cleared for development or agriculture reduce the range of the primates, resulting in small, isolated populations. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Where I live, many of the local populations have had their ranges extended simply by people “creating forests” through gardening activities. Yup, sometimes us humans aren’t always as bad as we think!