Mellon, Yum!

A night monkey really enjoys her snack

This cutie with the big, beaming eyes is a night monkey (also known as an owl monkey, which seems appropriate). She’s a resident of the Kusatsu Wonderland Tropical Zoo in Japan, which, according to a tourism website I found, is the highest elevation zoo in Japan, located in an area with active hot springs. Many of the zoo’s animals are kept in a dome heated by the local geothermal energy which has been designed to replicate the environment of a tropical jungle. Her name is Yotsu-chan and the zoo calls her “grandma,” so I’m guessing she’s one of the senior residents of the facility.

Night monkeys are primarily arboreal, found in the forests of Panama and much of South America. The form social groups of two to five individuals and practice monogamous mating. They are the only truly nocturnal monkey and those large eyes have monochromatic vision, which helps them receive and process visual information in the night. There are eleven recognized species within the genus, with differences in size and varied fur coloration and coat thickness depending on their environment and elevation.

Night monkeys are primarily frugivores—a word that I just learned and LOVE—since fruits are easy to detect through scent by these nocturnal creatures. To aid in their foraging, they have evolved with large olfactory organs, the largest of any new world monkey. Some species within the genus will also eat leaves, flowers and insects. I believe the little one in our header is one of those insect-consumers, an Azara’s night monkey (the zoo doesn’t have specifics I could find, so I’m guessing based on coloration). Amusingly, a scientific study concluded that juveniles and females are much more adept at insect hunting, using the palm of their hands to trap and flatten their insect prey and then eating the carcass.

You might want to click through to watch the original source vid on this one. The happy monkey chirps are so sweet. Enjoy, grandma!

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Wikipedia: Night monkey

Wikipedia: Azara's night monkey

Kusatsu Tropical Wonderland (zoo website, Japanese)

Ikidane (tourism website for Japan)