INTRODUCTION:
Sakis have unusual hair styles, bushy tails, dark fur and elaborate hair patterns on their heads. Male Sakis have more strikingly coloured heads than their female partners. Like all New World Monkeys, they have broad noses with nostrils pointing sideways which is separated by a wide septum. Sakis can grasp objects between their second and third fingers, the thumb being ‘just a finger’, not opposable as it is in Old World Monkeys and Apes.
Sakis have nails on their fingers and toes, although these are convex and rather pointed, almost claw-like. Their lower incisors are long and lean forward, a characteristic shared only with Uakari monkeys.
Sakis eat fruit, seeds, nuts, small birds and bird’s eggs, insects, bats and vegetable matter. They will actively seek out such creatures as nocturnal bats by entering holes in trees during the day in the hope of catching their tasty grub. They range from the Orinoco River north of the Amazon to the Guianas, and the upper Amazon except for the White-nosed Sakis which is restricted to an area south of the Amazon between the rivers Madeira and Xingu.
Sakis have a high pitched ‘whistle-squeak’ ending with an abrupt chuck; squeeeeeeechuck! They make other noises too, including squabbling sounds.
BEARDLESS SAKIS:
There are five species of beardless Sakis; Pithecia pithecia, Pithecia monachus, Pithecia irrorata, Pithecia albicans and Pithecia aequatorialis. Beardless Sakis live in tight family groups consisting of an adult pair and up to three immature young from consecutive years. Sub-adult young have to leave the family group and both adults are hostile towards neighbours of their own sex. The adults maintain their exclusive pair bond from one year to the next and lead their young around in small home ranges from 0.5 to 10 hectares in area. Fruit, which is less abundant but more nutritious than leaves, form the Sakis monkeys main diet, they also eat vertebrates, including small birds, mice and roosting bats which they tear apart in the hands before eating. Beardless Sakis are also known as the Sakiwinki.
MONK SAKI: (Pithecia aequatoriatalis) live in the Amazon Basin of southern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, northeastern Peru and northwestern Brazil. The Monk Saki Pithecia aequatoriatalis was previously identified under the Latin name of Pithecia monachus or Pithecia hirsuta. They are between 35 to 48 cm tall and their tails between 31 to 51 cm long. The Monk Saki females have long shaggy hair which frames their faces. They have these same type of long shaggy hairs on their neck; and bushy thick tail. Females have long and loose hairs on their heads; and the males have short and stiff hairs on their heads. Both sexes have a predominantly uniformly grey-brown to grey pelt, but the colour of their hands and feet is lighter. Their chin beards and underparts are either tan or red. Their pelts are generally dark agouti in colour, with pale hands and feet. Their crown pelage is short and stiff in males, and long and lax in females; and their ‘hoods’ partly conceal their ears and faces. Their tails are long and bushy. Monk Sakis are shy and wary, totally arboreal primates. They generally walk on all fours in the tree branches but they may sometimes walk upright on a large branch and leap across gaps. They move and forage in small family groups or mated pairs and feed on fruit, berries, honey, some leaves, mice, bats and birds. Females give birth to a single young; the young is usually born at night. In captivity Monk Saki monkeys may live for about twenty years. Monk Sakis are also known as monschsaffe. They are also often referred to as the bonneted, equatorial, red-bearded or Hairy Sakis.
THE WHITE-FACED SAKI: (Pithecia pithecia) is also known as the Pale-faced, Mat-faced Saki, Waiti-feici-wanaku or simly as the Wanaku. They live in southern and eastern Venezuela, the Guianas and northeastern Brazil. Presently their habitat is steadily being deminished by the destruction of the biotope. In Guianas white-faced Sakis have been observed going into tree hollows to collect bats, which they tear apart before eating. They live in small family groups and eat chiefly nuts, fruits and seeds. White-faced Sakis are remarkably passive animals, they rest often, and move little. Within the time span of three hours they generally move only about 90 meters. Strangely enough they are excellent leapers; they will indeed run and climb on all fours, but it has been discovered that they leap much softener. These leaps are generally about 10 meters far. They are completely arboreal but may decend to the lower branches of a tree when food is scarce higher up. Male White-faced Sakis are plainly differant from Monk Makis in that they have a distinct white fringe of fur around their faces. The female White-faced Sakis lack the distinctive facial markings of her mate. Male White-faced Sakis have uniformly blackish coats except for their faces, crowns and throats which are whitish to reddish in colour. The white-faced Saki’s hood does not cover it’s face. The sexes are very distinctive. The male’s face is light, the female’s dark, with white streaks from the sides of the nose to the corners of the mouth. White-faced Sakis are widespread over the Amazon basin but keep to the lower branches of fairly dry floored forests. White-faced Sakis are handsome and often kept and bred in zoos. Females give birth to a single young every second year, from the age of about three years the baby’s juvenile brother or sister is allowed to pick the baby up. From this time on the infant will often be carried by the juvenile, or by other members of the family. Unlike many monkeys which sleep in a fairly erect position, the White-faced Saki curls up in a cat-like fashion on a branch. Captive White-faced Sakis make a good combination with Golden Lion Tamarins. The Gold-faced or Golden-headed Sakis (Pithecia pithecia chrysocephala) is a subspecie of the White-faced Saki.
THE BALD-FACED SAKI: (Pithecia irrorata) lives southern of the Amazon River in western Brazil, southeastern Peru and northern Bolivia. Their pelts are generally dark agouti in colour, with pale hands and feet.
THE WHITE SAKI: (Pithecia albicans) is also known as the Buffy Saki. They live on the south bank of the Amazon between the Jurua and Purus rivers in western Brazil. White Sakis like forage for fruits, seeds, flowers, and ants. They are active by day; and they live in small family groups consisting of a mated pair and two to four young (their offspring). The White Saki has a predominantly black back; a long bushy black tail, and the rest of it’s body is buffy to reddish. Presently their habitat is steadily being deminished by the destruction of the biotope.
BEARDED SAKI:
There are 2 species of Bearded Sakis: Chiropotes albinasus and Chiropotes satanas. Bearded Sakis are also known as Couxio. They have bushy tails and long shaggy grey hairs framing their neck and face. They eat fruit, berries, honey, leaves, bats and mice they have specially shaped, strong denTition that enables it to break open hard nuts in their jaws. Bearded Saki are found both north and south of the Amazon river and live almost entirely in the upper and middle levels of the forest canopy they prefer untouched primary rainforest. Saki’s are shy, wary animals, they move in pairs or small family groups and are diurnal by nature. They travel through the trees as they eat for most of the morning. Around noon, when the sun above the trees become too intense and heat settles into the forest, they chose to settle down, stop moving, stop calling, and they become difficult to see and hear during their siesta time. Their specialized food preference (seeds) and other factors probably limit their natural density in any area, the southern bearded Saki being more limited by the size of its original habitat than most other Amazonian primates. The northern subspecies inhabit a large piece of Amazonia, north into Venezuela and Guyana, and it is not endangered. But the Southern Bearded Saki inhabits a small and rapidly disappearing piece of Amazonia south of the river, delimited to the east by palm swamps toward the Atlantic Ocean, to the west by a major tributary of the Amazon, the Xingu River. Sakis vary in colour across their range, from full black at its eastern extremity near the Atlantic Ocean to greyish-tan at its western extremity (defined by the Xingu River). In the middle of its range, along the Tocantins River, the southern bearded Saki is mainly chestnut-backed.
Recent studies suggest that the bearded Saki might have a social pattern quite unlike that of any other monkey. Groups of these monkeys that have been observed in the wild contain roughly equal numbers of adult males and females, for example, one group of 25 consisted of nine adult females, eight males and eight juveniles. While foraging, this group often split up into subgroups of one adult male, an adult female and a couple of young. There is therefor the possibility that the group is a community of monogamous pairs and their young. If so, the bearded Saki would be the only primate known to live in such a society apart from human beings.
THE SOUTHERN BEARDED SAKIS: (Chiropotes satanas) are also known as the Black-Bearded Sakis. Southern-Bearded Sakis are referred to as Cuxiu by local Brazilians. They live in southern Venezuela, in Brazil north of the Amazon, in the south of the Amazon and the east of Xingu, and in Guianas. They can also be sighted at the Gurupi Forest Reserve, about 150 miles south of Belem. The Gurupi Forest Reserve is one of three small semi-protected habitats of the southern bearded Saki. The forest has been set aside for controlled, supposedly sustained logging. Southern Bearded Sakis are also found up along the Tocantins River, on the edge of a large reservoir recently created by the hydro-electric dam, at Tucurui. West of the Tocantins, it receives complete protection only within small areas recently established on mining concession property in the Carajas Mountains.
Southern-Bearded Sakis are dark, thick-tailed monkeys the size of a domestic cat; with full beards hanging from their chins, and two high knobs of fur at the forehead. They sit with their tails hanging down, curled like commas, and sometimes swing them back and forth like scythes. Their faces are extended upward by bouffant elevations of fur at the forehead bulbs sometimes tall enough to look like extra uphanging beards. You can tell the fully adult males by their large pink genitalia, which hangs loosely beneath their tails, and by looking at the front where you’ll see that the males have a tomcat’s bulk and swagger in the body and they have especially long beards and dense forehead knobs around the face. The Black-bearded and White-nosed Sakis are larger than the white-faced and monk Saki. The Southern Bearded Saki has a black head and beard. It’s shoulders, back and flank vary from dark reddish chestnut to blackish brown; the limbs are black or chestnut; the hands and feet are blackish or reddish; and its tail is black. Their beards are well developed and their tails are so heavily furred that it is full and thick. They eat fruit, nuts, insects, flowers, leaves and possibly small vertebrates. Field studies have shown that the southern Bearded Sakis somewhat more adaptable to habitat change than previously believed. Heavy logging, in which at least half the trees are taken out, almost entirely eliminates the species. Yet light selective logging, in which no more than 15% of trees are destroyed, seems to result in only minor reductions in resident populations, even when some of their favorite food trees, such as the Massaranduba, are removed. Even light logging, however, opens up previously inaccessible pieces of forest to this primate’s most powerful predator, Homo sapiens, so that over the long term its habitat must be protected both from heavy or repeated logging and from the incursions of hunters into lightly logged regions. Unfortunately for the southern bearded Saki, its habitat, small to begin with, coincides with that piece of Amazonia now suddenly and powerfully in the wake of destruction.
The Black Saki: (Chiropotes satanas satanas) are also known as Saki Satan or Humboldt’s Sakis and have a parting on the crown, on either side of which the hair rises in a ‘bouffant’ style, and it has a bushy beard. When this monkey is angry it rises on its hindlegs and grinds its teeth. Its habit of drinking from its hands is supposed to derive from an anxiety not to wet its bearded. Wetting the Black Saki’s bearded is, to the monkey, an unforgivable sin. Black Bearded Sakis have bushy black coats, camel-coloured facial hair but the area around the eyes and nose is black and naked. Their head and body length is between 32 to 52 cm and their tail are between 36 to 50 cm long. They have a strange appearance, with a thick mane and beard, a very hairy tail, and russet or dark brown flanks. Their head, beard and tail is black and their hands and feet are russet or blackish.
• The Red-backed Sakis: (Cheiropotes satanas chiropotes) are also known as Jew monkeys. Where Red-backed Sakis occur on either side of the Amazon River; the river has acted as an effective barrier between the two groups who live there. Sakis generally hate water, so much so that the seperation between these two groups caused them to evolve differantly from eachother. This evolutionary phenomenon is known as allopatric speciation.
• Black-Bearded Sakis: (Cheiropotes satanas hirsuta) have long bushy tails; a black beard and black underparts. The rest of their bodies are predominantly uniform grey-brown to grey, except for their hands and feet which are lighter coloured. They eat fruit, seeds, ants, leaves, and flowers. Otherwise they are very similar to the Monk Sakis in appearance and habitat.
THE WHITE-NOSED BEARDED SAKI: (Cheiropotes albinasus) is also known as Saki a nez blanc. They live in Brazil from the Amazon and Xingu rivers to the northern Mato Grosso. The white-nosed Saki has a shorter beard than the other bearded Saki species. Its pelt is shiny black in colour. It’s nose and upperlip are covered with downward-growing, stiff, yellowish white hairs. The skin in this area contrasts sharply with the blackness of the remainder of its body. It’s has a whorl of hair on its head and a hairy face. The white-nosed Saki is the only species of Saki with a range south of the Amazon, unfortunately it has lost most of it’s rang to heavy logging and unsustainable farming. In 1979, there were two males held in Cologne Zoo in the Federal Republic of Germany, and there was one male in Sao Pualo Zoo in Brazil. Captive breeding programmes are planned at the Rio de Janeiro Primate Research Centre.
