Panamanian White-faced Capuchin

The Panamanian white-faced capuchin is also called the Panamanian White-headed capuchin or Central American white-faced capuchin. They are highly intelligent monkeys who are important to rainforest ecology for their role in dispersing seeds and pollen. They have been observed to use tools as weapons and for getting food as well as using plants to heal themselves.

Panamanian white-faced capuchins have been trained to help people with motor or sensory function impairment. They are known to be versatile monkeys in the wild, with the ability to adapt in different forests and eat various kinds of food.

Distinctively, Panamanian white-faced capuchins are medium sized monkeys with mostly black fur, pink face and white on most of the front part of the body. They also have a tail that is adapted for grasping or holding that is frequently curled up and used for support when feeding underneath a branch. They are diurnal and arboreal animals, and they usually move on all fours.

Highly social primate species, Panamanian white-faced capuchins live in groups of up to 40 individuals, most of which are female. However, the males are known to migrate often, while females stay with their female kin. Their kinship structure has alpha males who hold their position for as long as 17 years and usually birth most of the offspring in the social group.

Often times, the cause of death in male Panamanian white-faced capuchins is aggression from other male capuchins. When migrating, most males fight to take over from the alpha male, and this is a fight to the death. If the migrating male wins, then the infants of the dead alpha male are killed so as to assert dominance over the female and mate them.

They engage in strange social behavior such as eye-poking, tail-sucking, hand-sniffing, hair-prying and so on to strengthen social bonds. Males usually mate multiple females, and copulation takes about 2 minutes.

Interestingly, alpha males avoid mating with their daughters which is rare among New World Primates. They usually have single and multiple births and births occur during the dry season. Capuchins engage in high level of alloparenting, which means they collectively take care of infants in the social group.

The Panamanian white-faced capuchins have a long lifespan, with the maximum recorded being 54 years in captivity. Asides the males fighting each other during migration, capuchins are threatened by deforestation and hunting.