page_title: Geoffroy's spider monkey
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: Geoffroy's spider monkey / Behavior / Diet
context_page_description: Geoffroy’s spider monkey, also known as the black-handed spider monkey or the Central American spider monkey is a species of spider monkey, a type of New World monkey, from Central America, parts of Mexico and possibly a small portion of Colombia. There are at least five subspecies. Some primatologists classify the black-headed spider monkey, found in Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador as the same species as Geoffroy's spider monkey.
  It is one of the largest New World monkeys, often weighing as much as 9 kg. Its arms are significantly longer than its legs, and its prehensile tail can support the entire weight of the monkey and is used as an extra limb. Its hands have only a vestigial thumb, but long, strong, hook-like fingers. These adaptations allow the monkey to move by swinging by its arms beneath the tree branches.
  Geoffroy's spider monkey lives in fission–fusion societies that contain between 20 and 42 members. Its diet consists primarily of ripe fruit and it requires large tracts of forest to survive. As a result of habitat loss, hunting and capture for the pet trade, it is considered to be endangered by the IUCN.
context_section_description: Geoffroy's spider monkey eats mostly fruit – preferably ripe and fleshy – and spends 70% to 80% of its feeding time eating fruit. Leaves make up most of the rest of its diet. Young leaves are especially important to provide the protein that can be lacking in fruit. Other elements of its diet include flowers, bark, insects, honey, seeds and buds.
  In addition to providing much of the monkey's nutritional needs, fruit and leaves provide much of its water requirements. Like other spider monkeys, Geoffroy's spider monkey drinks water from tree holes and bromeliads in trees, but unlike other spider monkeys, it also drinks from terrestrial water sources.
caption: Prehensile tail can be useful when feeding
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