Featured in Eye Contact January 2010
Featured in Primate Art January 2010

Colobus Monkey and baby caught in the rain. The mother Colobus protectively wraps her arms around her baby and shelters it in her arms.

Black-and-white colobus are Old World monkeys of the genus Colobus, native to Africa. The word “colobus” comes from Greek ekolobóse “he cut short” and is so named because its thumb is a stump.

Baby Colobus are born completely white. Colobus are herbivorous, eating leaves, fruit, flowers, and twigs. The habitat of a colobus includes primary and secondary forest and wooded grasslands; they are found at higher density logged forests more so than other primary forests.