Abstract
The killing of an adult male spider monkey (Ateles belzebuth ) by a jaguar (Panthera onca) and a predation attempt by a puma (Felis concolor) on an adult female spider monkey have been observed at the CIEM (Centro de Investigaciones Ecológicas La Macarena), La Macarena, Colombia. These incidents occurred directly in front of an observer, even though it is said that predation under direct observation on any type of primate rarely occurs. On the basis of a review of the literature, and the observations reported here, we suggest that jaguars and pumas are likely to be the only significant potential predators on adult spider monkeys, probably because of their large body size.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Colombia–Japan primate research project members C. Mejia, A. Nishimura, K. Kimura, Y. Shimooka, and A. Agumi for critical suggestions and kind guidance throughout this study. We thank the Ministry of Environment of the Colombian Government for granting us permission to undertake the investigation in Macarena-Tinigua National Park. This study was supported by grants from the Monbusho International Scientific Research Program (09041144) and from the Monbusho COE Program to O. Takenaka (10CE2005), and a grant for Biodiversity Research of the twenty-first century COE (A14). We also thank Y. Katsuta, C. Thomas, and T. Ikeda for the proofreading of this manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to C. Chapman and two anonymous reviewers for fruitful comments and information that improved this manuscript.
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Matsuda, I., Izawa, K. Predation of wild spider monkeys at La Macarena, Colombia. Primates 49, 65–68 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-007-0042-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-007-0042-5