We heard Howler Monkeys almost every morning at around 3:00AM. They are loud. The males don't so much as howl as they produce a sound that is a combination of a gutteral grunt and a roar. Listen here. Turn your computer up loud, then imagine you are listening at 3:00am and the sound is being played through the speakers at a Grateful Dead concert and you are sitting in the front row. The sound can be heard for two miles and the monkeys are considered to be the loudest of all land animals. We had the monkeys within a few hundred yards of our camp most nights. The last night they were incredibly loud (think fire engine in front of your house). Will went out about 4:30am and with the manager of our camp, Dosio, he saw a male and female with a baby Howler. Will got everyone else up and we went out to see (and hear) the monkeys. We actually had a pretty good view - before I went back and got my camera. The photo above left I grabbed from National Geographic. The photo below I took (see the black blob) but we did have better views of the monkeys that I did not capture.
The Howler's at Chaa Creek are transplants having been reintroduced by Mick Fleming who owns the resort, but they are breeding and seem to be doing very well. They are the largest new world monkeys. Like most other new world monkeys they have a prehensile tail they use to hold onto trees when they climb.
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