HAPPY FRIDAY! Okay, so Friday’s don’t mean that much to me anymore since a Friday or a Wednesday are basically the same when you run your own business. To make this Friday a little more special I figured we could talk about a fun animal like the Guatemalan Black Howler, which is also known as the Yucatan Black Howler. It is a New World Monkey that can be found in Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. So let’s grab the sunscreen and head to the sunny south to learn about this fun and exciting monkey.

The Guatemalan Black Howler is the largest of the Howler Monkey species and one of the largest of all the New World Monkey’s. I bet you are wondering how big they are, aren’t you? Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. The Guatemalan Black Howler on average weighs 11.4 kg (25 lbs), however, the females are typically smaller than this. Both sexes of this monkey species have black fur with a long prehensile tail. Although, the juveniles are easy to pick out since they start life out with a nice brown coloured coat of fur. I guess kids will always rebel against their parents, no matter what animal species.

The diet of the Guatemalan Black Howler is predominantly leaves, which makes life tough since this type of vegetation is incredibly difficult to obtain nutrients from. As you might expect, our monkey friend has evolved a few adaptations to allow them to enjoy this high cellulose diet. First of all, they have molars that have high shearing crests which allows them to obviously shear the plant material into a nice leafy paste. Oddly enough, the males also have an enlarged hyoid bone, which does nothing to help digest the plant material but it does amplify their calls. How is this an adaptation to help them eat leaves? Well, it gives them the ability to call other males without having to expend much energy. For these monkey’s, energy is priceless since they don’t get much of it from their diet. Do you ever have those days where you feel like you have absolutely no energy? If you answered ‘yes’ to this question then perhaps you need to stop eating leaves!

Guatemalan Black Howler Fast Fact – As mentioned, energy is a priceless commodity for the Black Howler. As such, they spend most of their day simply resting. Eating takes up about a 1/4 of their day while moving around from place to place only takes up 1/10th of their time. The rest of their day is just lounging around in the trees. Now that is the good life!

I hope you enjoyed another week of animal facts. Have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday.