In past days while talking with local people, someone ask me if monkeys drink water? So, in today’s post we are going to talk about that. The short answer is yes. However not all species go to streams, ponds or water reservoirs to drink water.
Most of the water monkeys use for their normal functioning came from the metabolic process, which means that water is extracted from the food they eat. But in some places and at some seasons some species also go to the ground and drink water from streams, ponds and even human water reservoirs or water reservoirs used by our domestic animals.
For example, during rainy season in the study are as well as in humid forest like the Amazon, red howler monkeys, black-capped capuchins and Colombian squirrel monkeys drink rainy water from branches and palm leaves. However, we have not seen them drinking water during the dry season from any of the water ponds remaining in the ground or from the cattle water reservoirs.
In dry forest howler monkeys and capuchins use to go to the ground and drink water from human made water reservoirs or small streams. At other parts monkeys have also seen drinking water from rivers or from house roofs in India.
During the dry season of 2019, some of the stream ponds that usually have water in dry months dried completely, leaving all of the wildlife present in the area without water except by the cattle water reservoirs. We don’t know if monkey have started to use these reservoirs too.
Therefore, with the increased change in precipitation in the area and the possibility of another long dry season during this end of year and the first months of 2021, we put some camera traps at some cattle water reservoirs in past weeks to monitor the use of this water sources for wildlife. Hopefully these cameras also give us some information about the use of these water reservoirs for monkeys during dry months.
We will keep you posted on what animals we found using cattle water reservoirs in our new camera traps monitoring…
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