Greater Spot-nosed Monkey

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Greater Spot-nosed Monkey[1]
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Cercopithecidae
Genus: Cercopithecus
Species: C. nictitans
Binomial name
Cercopithecus nictitans
(Linnaeus, 1766)

The Greater Spot-nosed Monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans) is one of the smallest Old World monkeys.

Recently, it has been discovered that the Greater Spot-nosed Monkey sometimes communicates by combining different sounds into a sequence, which has an entirely different meaning from the sounds out of which it is made.[3] For instance, the sound "pyow" alone means that other animals, like a Leopard, are lurking nearby, and "hack" means that a flying animal, like an eagle, is flying near by. But when the two are combined together, like in the sequence "pyow pyow hack hack hack hack" they have an entirely different meaning: let's get out of here and move to another place.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Groves, Colin (16 November 2005). in Wilson, D. E., and Reeder, D. M. (eds): Mammal Species of the World, 3rd edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 157. ISBN 0-801-88221-4. 
  2. ^ Butynski, T. & Members of the Primate Specialist Group (2000). Cercopithecus nictitans. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  3. ^ Henderson, Mark (2006-05-18). Pyow pyow pyow... hack hack hack hack! Let's get out of here (in monkey talk). The Times Online. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.

[edit] External links

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