Species profile
About the red colobus
The ashy red colobus is a slender, long-limbed monkey with a rust-red crown and limbs and a dark grey back. It lives in large, loud troops high in the canopy of the western Tanzanian forests, and Mahale Mountains National Park is one of its most important remaining strongholds.
It has an unusual place in the ecology of Mahale: red colobus are the main mammalian prey of the park's chimpanzees, and cooperative chimpanzee hunts of colobus troops are among the best-documented predatory behaviour in wild apes. The species is classed as Endangered and its range is now badly fragmented.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Diurnal and arboreal, feeding through the morning and resting in the heat. Troops are noisy and often mixed with red-tailed and blue monkeys.
Social life
Large multi-male troops of twenty to over eighty. Unusually among colobus, females rather than males disperse from their birth troop.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
A rust-red crown and limbs, and a central role in Mahale’s ecology as the chimpanzees’ main hunted prey.