Page:How and Why Library 299.jpg

 Sometimes in school you learn a rule, and then the teacher will tell you that there are times when the rule doesn't work. The marmoset, the smallest and prettiest of all South American monkeys, cannot use his tail in climbing. When children see the marmoset they always cry: "Oh, what a little dear!" He is no bigger than a chipmunk. He is only eight inches long, with a furry body and a foot-long bushy tail that he carries like a plume. If it wasn't for his almost human little face and hands, and his wing-like, tufted ears, you might think him some kind of squirrel.

There is a squirrel monkey from South America only a little larger than his nut-cracking namesake. He has a gray face and a black nose, but has long hind legs so he leaps something like a kangaroo. When he is happy he shows it by grinning, and when he is hurt tears come into his eyes. In his home in the Amazon forests it rains torrents sometimes, as if the bottom had fallen out of the clouds. When caught in such a storm, a troop of these squirrel monkeys huddle together in the thickest tree they can find, and put their tails around each others' necks for company and comfort.

These marmosets and squirrel monkeys have some of the noisiest neighbors—the howling monkeys. They begin howling at sunrise, keep it up until the next sunrise, and then take a fresh start. The woods ring and echo with their howls. They travel all the time through the high branches of the trees, the males leading, and the mother monkeys following, each with one or two babies clinging to her neck with fingers and tails. They swing by their tails and catch the next limb with a hand. The brown howler is bad enough, but the red howler makes the night hideous with his cries. They screech as if all the animals in the forest were eating each other up. Some zoos won't have Little-old-man-howler, as he is called, at all.

Another South American monkey is the Saki. He has a ruddy back, and an almost human habit of cupping a hand and dipping up water when he wants to drink. He is so delicate that he seldom lives long in captivity, so you may never see him. But you are sure to see the spider monkey. He has such long slim arms and tail, and such a small body that he looks like a big, hairy spider. But really he is very gentle and even affectionate. He has little stumps of thumbs that are of little use to him, and he is not as agile as many other monkeys. A mama spider monkey likes to sit down and cuddle her baby in her arms.