Blue Monkey

Kansas City Zoo - Baby Blue Monkey Blue-monkey-1-.jpg Monkey
These monkeys are noticeably blue as suggested by their name. Blue monkeys have little hair on their face, that gives them the blue appearance sometimes. They are native to the central and east Africa, from the upper Congo basin to the Great Rift Valley. They are also found in Angola and Zambia. They eat fruits and leaves but will not shy away from eating slow-moving invertebrates.

Social
In these female-bonded societies, only 5–15% of monkeys' activity budget is occupied by social interactions and the most common social interactions within a group are grooming and play. Relationships between group members vary: infants interact most frequently with their peers and adult or juvenile females and are rarely seen near adult males (Rudran 1978).

Alloparenting is common among blue monkeys. The most common infant handlers are juvenile females and usually one infant is carried by a number of alloparents. One hypothesis is that this allows the infant to learn to socialise at an early stage in life.

Interesting female-female relationships exist among blue monkeys. This relationship is believed to be shaped by their feeding ecology, which, in turn, is shaped by between-group and within-group competition. Blue monkey females exhibit strong, aggressive competition between groups undefined and between other species because of their territorial character but milder though more frequent competition within groups. Even though earlier beliefs were that blue monkeys are not territorial, more current extended research shows that earlier researched misinterpreted the results because social interactions overall are infrequent. Moreover, overall agonism rates in blue monkeys are very low. Within group conflicts are mild and infrequent because females tend to distance themselves from one another and feed at different sites, thus avoiding competition. Though it was believed that blue monkeys are egalitarian, current extended research confirms that there actually is linear dominance hierarchy in female blue monkeys, which becomes more apparent when food resources are scarce.

Conservation Status
The blue monkey is not an endangered species; however, this species is a victim to exploitation as it is hunted for bushmeat. It is the villagers who hunt the blue monkey for its meat.

Furthermore, the blue monkey population also tends to get affected as a consequence of habitat loss.