List of Endangered New World Monkeys
There are 141 species of new world monkeys, of which the 33 species in the lists below are classified as endangered. New world monkeys are the ones that live wild in Mexico, Central America and South America.
For some types of monkeys almost all species are endangered. For instance, six out of seven species of spider monkeys are endangered, as are three of the four species of bearded sakis. Also endangered are all four species of Brazil's lion tamarins.
Determinations of whether monkeys are endangered come from the World Conservation Union (IUCN), which maintains the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The organization is an internationally recognized authority on the status of species around the world.
The Red List uses categories to indicate how severely endangered an animal species is. Monkeys get placed into categories of "Critically Endangered" and "Endangered" based on how rapidly their population has declined, how small an area they now occupy, how many individuals remain, or the likelihood they'll soon become extinct.
Besides the monkeys listed here, the Red List assigns to the "Vulnerable" category another 25 new world species which have dropped in numbers, but less drastically than the endangered species. The three categories together make up the "Threatened" species. In total, 58 species (41 percent) of new world monkeys are threatened.
Critically Endangered Monkeys in Central and South America
The dozen critically endangered species listed below are the new world monkeys that now live closest to the brink of becoming extinct in the wild. They have either:
- a population decline of at least 80 percent within ten years or three generations,
- fragmented or unstable populations over an area of less than 100 square kilometres (39 square miles),
- numbers totalling less than 50 mature individuals, or
- at least a 50 percent probability of becoming extinct in the wild within ten years or three generations.
|Common Name||Scientific Name||Countries|
|Brown-headed Spider Monkey||Ateles fusciceps||Colombia, Ecuador, Panama|
|Variegated Spider Monkey||Ateles hybridus||Colombia, Venezuela|
|Northern Muriqui||Brachyteles hypoxanthus||Brazil|
|Blond Titi Monkey||Callicebus barbarabrownae||Brazil|
|Blonde Capuchin||Cebus flavius||Brazil|
|Ka'apor Capuchin||Cebus kaapori||Brazil|
|Yellow-breasted Capuchin||Cebus xanthosternos||Brazil|
|Black Bearded Saki||Chiropotes satanas||Brazil|
|Colombian Woolly Monkey||Lagothrix lugens||Colombia|
|Black-faced Lion Tamarin||Leontopithecus caissara||Brazil|
|Peruvian Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey||Oreonax flavicauda||Peru|
|Cotton-headed Tamarin||Saguinus oedipus||Colombia|
Endangered Monkeys in Mexico, Central America and South America
Endangered monkeys are not as bad off as those that are critically endangered, but they still have come alarmingly close to extinction. These 21 new world monkeys have either:
- a population decline of at least 50 percent within ten years or three generations,
- fragmented or unstable populations over an area of less than 5000 square kilometres (1930 square miles),
- numbers totalling less than 250 mature individuals, or
- at least a 20 percent probability of becoming extinct in the wild within 20 years or five generations.
|Common Name||Scientific Name||Countries|
|Yucatan Black Howler Monkey||Alouatta pigra||Belize, Guatemala, Mexico|
|Maranhao Red-handed Howler Monkey||Alouatta ululata||Brazil|
|White-bellied Spider Monkey||Ateles belzebuth||Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela|
|Black-faced Black Spider Monkey||Ateles chamek||Bolivia, Brazil, Peru|
|Geoffroy's Spider Monkey||Ateles geoffroyi||Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama|
|White-cheeked Spider Monkey||Ateles marginatus||Brazil|
|Woolly Spider Monkey||Brachyteles arachnoides||Brazil|
|Coimbra-filho's Titi Monkey||Callicebus coimbrai||Brazil|
|Beni Titi Monkey||Callicebus modestus||Bolivia|
|Rio Mayo Titi Monkey||Callicebus oenanthe||Peru|
|Olalla Brothers' Titi||Callicebus olallae||Bolivia|
|Buffy-headed Marmoset||Callithrix flaviceps||Brazil|
|Robust Tufted Capuchin||Cebus robustus||Brazil|
|White-nosed Bearded Saki||Chiropotes albinasus||Brazil|
|Uta Hick's Bearded Saki||Chiropotes utahickae||Brazil|
|Geoffroy's Woolly Monkey||Lagothrix cana||Bolivia, Brazil, Peru|
|Golden-headed Lion Tamarin||Leontopithecus chrysomelas||Brazil|
|Golden-rumped Lion Tamarin||Leontopithecus chrysopygus||Brazil|
|Golden Lion Tamarin||Leontopithecus rosalia||Brazil|
|Brazilian Bare-faced Tamarin||Saguinus bicolor||Brazil|
|Silvery-brown Tamarin||Saguinus leucopus||Colombia|
IUCN. 2010. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2010.2.