Mammals, Original Wild Facts

Wild Fact #898 – A Howl of a Time – Howler Monkey

Here we sit at the middle of the week already!  Happy Hump Day everyone! I don’t know about you but I am finding this week to be flying by. Yesterday, we talked about a fish that likes to walk on the ocean floor.  Today, we are going to head to the rainforest to talk about an animal that hangs out in the trees.  The howler monkey lives in Central and South America and hardly ever leave their beloved tree tops.

As you may have guessed by their name the howler monkey likes to make very loud howling noises.  In fact, they are the loudest monkey on this planet, that we know about. Believe it or not the Guinness Book of World Records indicates that the howler monkey can be heard clearly for 4.8 Km (3 miles) which may make this monkey the loudest land animal alive.  So how is this monkey capable of being so loud? Well, throughout evolution they have developed a large throat and a specialized shell-like vocal chamber.  The next question you have to ask is why do they need to be so loud.  This is the way one troop of howler monkies lets another troop know to back off as this is their territory.  Every morning and every evening the troop of howler monkies will belt out these beautiful sounds to let every other monkey know where their boundaries lie. This is definitely one animal that I would never want to get into a yelling match with. Before you go make sure you check out the sound clip of the Howler Monkey, below:

Howler Monkey Fast Fact: Several howler monkey females will often help a mother take care of her young. This is probably a good thing since we all know monkies can be tough to take care of!

Enjoy the rest of the day and I will be back tomorrow with another fun Wild Fact!

7 Comments

  1. We had a little girl living next door that could have fit right in with the howler monkeys, the only difference being she stayed on the ground!

  2. We saw these guys during a recent trip to Costa Rica. They are noisy fellows but not as mischievous as many of the other species there. They are fun to watch and listen too. (Except early in the morning when you want to sleep in!)

    1. Hi Trent!

      That is pretty cool that you were lucky enough to watch these loud little guys. I can imagine they would make sleeping in very difficult.
      Thanks for sharing your story!

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