Mandrill-like
| Mandrill-like | ||||||||||||
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Mandrill ( mandrillus sphinx ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Mandrillus | ||||||||||||
| Ritgen , 1824 |
The mandrill-like ( mandrillus ) are a genus from the primate family of the vervet monkeys , which includes two species: the mandrill ( M. sphinx ) and the drill ( M. leucophaeus ).
features
Mandrill-like are sturdy monkeys , externally similar to baboons , with long snouts and short, upturned tails and an olive-brown fur. Characteristic of the mandrill-like are bony furrows that run down along the nasal bone. Mandrills have six furrows that are colored blue and frame the red nose, drills have two, their face is colored black. The buttocks are hairless and pink and bluish in color. Females develop a large, noticeable sexual swelling during their fertility period. Among all monkeys , and probably also among all primates , mandrill-like animals show the greatest sexual dimorphism in terms of weight and size. Females reach a weight of 6.5 to 13 kg, the males can become more than three times heavier with a weight of 18 to 45 kg. This makes them the heaviest primates besides the great apes .
distribution
They inhabit the tropical rainforests in a relatively small area in Lower Guinea and live mainly on the ground. The distribution area of the genus extends from southeast Nigeria (east of the Cross River ) over the southwest and south of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea (including Bioko ), Gabon (west of Ivindo and Ogooué ) to the coastal part of the Republic of the Congo north of Pointe-Noire . The Sanaga in Cameroon separates the two species, the drill to the north and the mandrill to the south. The same habitat, which is characterized by the highest rainfall in Africa, is inhabited by three genera of the Lori-like (Lorisiformes), the bear lemurs ( Arctocebus ), the Kielnagelgalagos ( Euoticus ) and the squirrel galagos ( Sciurocheirus ). It is probably characterized by the fact that it has always remained moist, even in dry seasons, when a band of savannah formed east of it, connecting the Sudanese savannahs with those south of the Congo Basin .
Mandrill-like are predominantly terrestrial and form large groups that inhabit huge roaming areas, and feed primarily on fruits, seeds, other parts of plants and small and medium-sized animals up to the size of a ducker .
Systematics
The first description of a drill or mandrill was published in 1554 by the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner . He considered the monkey to be a species of wolf. In 1758 the Swedish scientist Carl von Linné described the mandrill under the scientific name Simia sphinx , followed in 1807 by the French zoologist Frédéric Cuvier's description of the mandrill with the name Simia leucophaeus . The genus Mandrillus was introduced in 1824 by the German physician and natural scientist Ferdinand von Ritgen . In the past, the mandrill-like were considered close relatives of the baboons ( Papio ) and were occasionally even considered as "forest baboons " as belonging to this genus (by Elliot , Haltorth and Hilzheimer ) or as their sub-genus. As far as we know today, they are only distantly related to them; their sister group is likely to be the white-eyed mangabians ( Cercocebus ). The drill is polytypic, with two subspecies, M. leucophaeus leucophaeus on the mainland and M. leucophaeus poensis on Bioko ; the mandrill is considered monotypical .
literature
- Thomas Geissmann : Comparative Primatology. Springer-Verlag, Berlin et al. 2003, ISBN 3-540-43645-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Jonathan Kingdon & Colin P. Groves : Genus Mandrillus , Mandrills Pages 190-191 in Thomas Butynski , Jonathan Kingdon and Jan Kalina (eds.): Mammals of Africa Volume II. Primates. Bloomsbury, London, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4081-2252-5
