Spider Monkey Hanging 43cm - Soft Toy

Physical Characteristics
The black-handed spider monkey has a light to medium brown body and darker limbs with the hands and feet usually black in colour. They have slender bodies and limbs with long narrow hands. The tail is sometimes longer than the body. When the animal is on the lookout, it stands or walks on two feet, using the tail to hold on to a support adapted for grasping or seizing. In the wild, the Spider monkey rarely comes down to the jungle floor.

Habitat
Spider monkeys live in evergreen rainforests, semi deciduous and mangrove forests, almost never coming to the ground. In these forests they live mostly in the upper canopy, preferring undisturbed high forest.

Behaviour
Spider monkeys live in medium-sized, loosely associated groups of about 30 individuals, which fragment into subgroups of varying smaller sizes and composition. Unless there is an abundance of preferred food available, the subgroup size will consist of fewer than 4 animals. These groups will roam independently in the same general area; the only persistent association is that of a female with her offspring. Females have a more active leading role than males.

Breeding
Spider monkeys have a gestation period of 226-232 days, after which one entirely black baby is born. The baby is continuously carried by the mother, clinging to her ventrum and at about 5 months of age it will begin riding on her back. It will be dependent on its mother's milk for 2 years. Adult colouration is attained at the end of infancy and will not begin to manifest itself until it is 5 months old.

Diet
Spider monkeys are fruigivorous preferring a diet of 90% fruit and seeds, feeding on the mature soft parts of a wide variety of fruits in which the seeds are swallowed along with the fruit. They also eat young leaves, flowers, aerial roots, sometimes bark and decaying wood, as well as honey.

Strange and Interesting Facts
Spider monkeys tend to feed by suspension while hanging, climbing or moving rather than pick it up and carry it somewhere else.