Product Description
Our white-throated capuchin monkey holds a banana and is ready to play! Use it for sand tray therapy or as part of a school rainforest diorama.
Our White-throated Capuchin Monkey Plastic Toy Made of solid plastic, our capuchin monkey toy holds a banana, one of its favorite foods, and measures 1 1/2 inches from nose to tail. Check out our wide selection of primate toys and gifts. White-throated Capuchin Monkey Facts Back in the 1400s when explores came to the Americas they saw monkeys that reminded them of the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor. Monks of this order in the Roman Catholic Church wore brown robes with large hoods that covered their faces. The explorers called the small new world monkeys they saw Capuchin monkeys, and the name stuck. So did the Capuchin monkeys whose range extends from Central America down into South America as far as Argentina. While there is some disagreement over the various subspecies, it is clear that they extend back at least six million years ago if not longer. The White-throated capuchin (Cebus capucinus, also known as white-faced capuchin or white-headed capuchin) is best known to people of a certain age as the companion to the organ grinder. While there is not much call for that anymore, in recent years these highly intelligent creatures have been trained to help disabled and paralyzed individuals. In the wild the white-throated capuchin is native to Central America as well as the extreme northwestern corner of South America. It has mostly black hair or fur with a white face and throat area that extends onto the shoulders as depicted by our plastic model. The real animal measures from 13 to 17 inches before you add on the tail, which can be about 21 inches long. The tail is also prehensile, which means it can move around to grasp things. That helps a lot since white-throated capuchins, like most do, spend much of their time in trees. In fact, their behavior up in the trees spreading seeds and pollen is critical to rainforest development. Like other capuchin monkeys, the white-throated capuchins spend almost all of their days looking for food. They will eat just about anything, though their primary foods are fruits and insects. More than fifty percent of their intake can be fruits such as bananas, mangos, and anything else that is ripe. Much like humans in the store, these monkeys test for freshness and ripeness by squeezing and sniffing the fruit as well as poking at it. Unlike most humans, they also eat a lot of insects such as beetles, ants, wasps, and caterpillars, as well as larvae of various insects. For a nice change of pace they also eat birds' eggs, birds, frogs, lizards, crabs, mollusks, squirrels, and more as they are true omnivores. You can learn more about white-throated capuchins at the Animal Diversity Web, Wildscreen Arkive, and Primate Info Net websites, among others. If you enjoyed learning about real momkeys, why not take home a plastic white-throated capuchin monkey replica for your collection? Article by Kevin Tipple