Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Male Was Followed By A Great
Number Of Females; Several Of The Latter Carrying Their Young On Their
Shoulders.
The howling monkeys, which live in society in different
parts of America, everywhere resemble each other in their manners,
though the species are not always the same.
The uniformity with which
the araguatos* (* Simia ursina.) perform their movements is extremely
striking. Whenever the branches of neighbouring trees do not touch
each other, the male who leads the party suspends himself by the
callous and prehensile part of his tail; and, letting fall the rest of
his body, swings himself till in one of his oscillations he reaches
the neighbouring branch. The whole file performs the same movements on
the same spot. It is almost superfluous to add how dubious is the
assertion of Ulloa, and so many otherwise well-informed travellers,
according to whom, the marimondos,* (* Simia belzebuth.) the
araguatos, and other monkeys with a prehensile tail, form a sort of
chain, in order to reach the opposite side of a river.* (* Ulloa has
not hesitated to represent in an engraving this extraordinary feat of
the monkeys with a prehensile tail. - See Viage a la America
Meridional, Madrid 1748.) We had opportunities, during five years, of
observing thousands of these animals; and for this very reason we
place no confidence in statements possibly invented by the Europeans
themselves, though repeated by the Indians of the Missions, as if they
had been transmitted to them by their fathers. Man, the most remote
from civilization, enjoys the astonishment he excites in recounting
the marvels of his country.
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