Colobus Monkey Observation

The Eastern Black and White Colobus monkey are found all over Africa. Their name Colobus means mutilated one, referring to their reduced thumb. They have a tail that is 706 mm long for females and 829 mm long for males. They weigh between 6-11 kg, with the males being slightly larger than the females. The Colobus lives in small social groups of about ten animals, which includes one adult male, a female, and her children. We observed the Colobus at the Henry Villas Zoo in Madison, WI. The animals at the zoo are ensure to have the highest standards of welfare and the best care that is given to the animals. The zoo setting allows us to observe the animal behavior repeatedly from the same species and or the same individual. Our objective of this project was to evaluate why the Colobus are always up high, sleeping or interacting with one another? Also to evaluate why are they always together? These two questions lead us to observe the social and the solitary behavior of the Colobus monkeys. We observed the occurrence of resting, auto grooming, movement, and sleeping. In the social behaviors, we observed the occurrence of social interaction, allow grooming, clinging, playing, interspecific interaction, and miscellaneous. These

Working as partners or a group of two students, we monitored and observed two types of behavior: a) solitary behavior and b) social behavior within the two Colobus we saw at the zoo. In the solitary behavior we observed four behaviors: resting, auto-grooming, moving, and sleeping. In the social behavior we observed six behaviors: social interaction, allo-grooming, clinging, playing, interspecific interaction, and miscellaneous. We define solitary behavior as behaviors an individual does on its own majority of the time without others of their species. Social behavior is social interaction between one or more of the same