Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: monkeys

According to Wikipedia, howler monkeys are among the largest of the New World monkeys and one of only a few nest-building monkeys. Most howler species live in groups of six to 15 animals, with one to three adult males and multiple females. Mantled howler monkeys are an exception, commonly living in groups of 15 to 20 individuals with more than three adult males. The number of males in a given group is negatively correlated with the size of their hyoid, and is positively correlated with testes size. Physical fighting among group members is infrequent and generally of short duration. However, serious injuries can result. Both males and females rarely fight with each other, but physical aggression is even more rare between sexes. Group size varies by species and by location, with an approximate male to female ratio of one male to four females. As their name suggests, vocal communication forms an important part of their social behavior. They each have an enlarged basihyal or hyoid bone which helps them make their loud vocalizations. Group males generally call at dawn and dusk, as well as interspersed times throughout the day. The main vocals consist of loud, deep guttural growls or "howls". Howler monkeys are widely considered to be the loudest land animal. According to Guinness Book of World Records, their vocalizations can be heard clearly for 3 miles (4.8 km). The function of howling is thought to relate to intergroup spacing and territory protection, as well as possibly to mate-guarding. These large and slow-moving monkeys are the only folivores of the New World monkeys. Howlers eat mainly top canopy leaves, together with fruit, buds, flowers, and nuts. They need to be careful not to eat too many leaves of certain species in one sitting, as some contain toxins that can poison them. Howler monkeys are also known to occasionally raid birds’ nests and chicken coops and consume the eggs.

Borneo, the island part of Malaysia, contributed a display of mosaiculture sculptures illustrating the orangutans that live in its forests. Like many other large islands around the world, Borneo has a distinctive biodiversity. Approximately 44 mammal, 37 bird, and 19 fish species live there and are found nowhere else on Earth. And this doesn’t include the thousands of species that Borneo shares with other islands in the area. This great biodiversity is a result of its tropical climate and dense forests. Up to 1,000 different animal species were once counted on one tree alone, the majority being insects. Orangutans are an integral part of this biodiversity. Two species exist: the Bornean and the Sumatran. The word orangutan comes from the Malay and Indonesian languages and means "man of the forest". The orangutan is the world’s largest arboreal mammal. It spends almost half of its day foraging for food, and 39% of the day sleeping. The remainder of its day is divided between traveling around and building its nest, which it constructs anew every night. Unfortunately, the survival of orangutans in nature has been seriously threatened by the development of human activities, particularly deforestation. About 80% of the orangutans’ habitat has been deforested in the past 20 years. Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society predict that most of the orangutan population will be extinct within ten years. For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at: www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015

Borneo, the island part of Malaysia, contributed a display of mosaiculture sculptures illustrating the orangutans that live in its forests. Like many other large islands around the world, Borneo has a distinctive biodiversity. Approximately 44 mammal, 37 bird, and 19 fish species live there and are found nowhere else on Earth. And this doesn’t include the thousands of species that Borneo shares with other islands in the area. This great biodiversity is a result of its tropical climate and dense forests. Up to 1,000 different animal species were once counted on one tree alone, the majority being insects. Orangutans are an integral part of this biodiversity. Two species exist: the Bornean and the Sumatran. The word orangutan comes from the Malay and Indonesian languages and means "man of the forest". The orangutan is the world’s largest arboreal mammal. It spends almost half of its day foraging for food, and 39% of the day sleeping. The remainder of its day is divided between traveling around and building its nest, which it constructs anew every night. Unfortunately, the survival of orangutans in nature has been seriously threatened by the development of human activities, particularly deforestation. About 80% of the orangutans’ habitat has been deforested in the past 20 years. Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society predict that most of the orangutan population will be extinct within ten years. For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at: www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015

Uganda’s contribution to the Mosaïcultures Internationales competition drew attention to the plight of gorillas. In the southwest part of Uganda, in a mountain chain called the Virunga Mountains, lives the only population of mountain gorillas in the world, a sub-species of the eastern gorillas. According to the World Wildlife Federation, no more than 800 individuals of this subgroup are to be found in these mountains that Uganda shares with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the mountain gorilla is not the only type of gorilla whose future is threatened. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, all species and sub-species of gorillas are either endangered or critically endangered. Gorillas have a relatively extensive vocabulary, containing about 25 distinct sounds. They manage to communicate with each other not only through these "words," but also through gestures and even mimes. The famous researcher Dian Fossey greatly contributed to increasing our knowledge about gorillas. In the 1960s - 1980s, she made several trips to the Virunga Mountains and was eventually accepted by the mountain gorillas living there. She was murdered not long after Christmas of 1985 in these same mountains. For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at: www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015

Almost family is a Mosaiculture artwork presented by the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest cousins in the larger Hominidae family. In fact, we share 98.7% of our gene pool with each of them. You have to go back six million years, to the end of the Miocene era, to find the common ancestor of these three species. Since the end of the 1960s, many studies have enabled us to discover the intellectual abilities of chimpanzees. A female chimp named Lana, for example, was the first to learn a symbol-based language invented for primates known as Yerkish. Chimpanzee populations are declining everywhere in Africa. Whereas two million individuals existed at the dawn of the 20th century, today the number is somewhere between 150,000 and 250,000. And the trend gives little cause for optimism: their numbers have fallen by half over the last 20 years alone, resulting in the disappearance of the genus from four African countries. Poaching is a problem, as well as deforestation, which breaks up the chimpanzees’ habitat into small islands. Thankfully, efforts have been made to reverse this decline. Since 2001, the survival of chimpanzees has been the focus of the great ape protection program called GRASP, established by the United Nations Environment Program. For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at: www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015