Probably depends on regions.
iirc its the most common african monkey in the us, and in europe its the second after the macaque.
Zookeeper Animal Pack: How would you have done the roster?
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iirc its the most common african monkey in the us, and in europe its the second after the macaque.
I feel stupid because I was supposed to type more, but my kid got up for water and I got distracted and hit 'post'. Egg on the face situation.
The whole comment was meant to be, "the mantled guereza is not that common, or rather, not that commonly known. The baboon was kind of the ideal primate choice because most everyone knows what a baboon is, even if they don't know the exact species, and the Hamadryas is the most common true baboon in captivity these days."
I blame my toddler.
Edit: In any event I can and always will agree that the sifaka was a bad choice.
Not exactly but defently in the top 5.
The very similar members of Chlorocebus aka Green, vervet, grivet and malbrouk monkey got them defenetly beat, atleast one on a species level and all defenetly when counted together and im quite sure most people would be perfectly happy with just one of them.
Other reason is that they once all were counted as one species, the green monkey and were only rather recently split up into 6 species. Makes it pretty much of a headache to differentiate them on zootierliste, especally in german where they are all named green meercat and many older zoos dont even know which one they got.
Pretty much a "what tiger/lion subspecies" "idk, mixed propaply" type moment
So yeah if we just want the most common non barbary macaque african monkey, its one of them, but guerezas are defenetly very common
164 holdings across the various subspecies is comparable to many others the NWMs. It’s one of the more common primates in captivity and probably top amongst African primates I would guess.
See here:
My issue isn't so much with the guereza alone (though I'm not convinced by those huge numbers), but rather with the idea that the baboon should be replaced under your criteria. To me that doesn't make any sense.
Never really gotten the popularity for the baboon given how similar it is to the existing in game monkeys whereas a generic african monkey such as a colobus, guenon or mangabey would be more unique compared to the existing primates, its honestly really weird the selection of old world monkeys we have gotten, almost all large baboon like animals and the one we have that isn't is very unique looking and doesn't really exist outside of its native range
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For a combination of factors i think:
- the hamadryas is one of those really old school, classic zoo animals
-the desert and cliff biomes does set it apart from all other primates, both in game and in general.
- "Baboon" is a little more of a household name, atleast compared to other groups of monkeys, which i think works to their advantage as i guess people tend to think of them of their own group somewhat seperate from other monkeys.
-another thing working to their advantage is that the only two real choices were the hamadryas and gelada, while for more stereotypical african monkeys there were alot more options that were competing against each other, and tying in with the previous point also with south american monkeys.
-imo they really arent that similar to the mandrill and macaque. Not anymore similar than any of the other zookeeper animals were to animals in game or coatis are to raccoons for example.
All that being said i still think that a "normal" monkey is definetly africas most needed animal left to add, atleast mammal wise.
And in a vacuum they and a baboon would be pretty evenly matched for me, just the apes, mandrill and lemurs all being tropical was what gave the baboon the edge for me.
For me
Pallas's Cat
Hamadryas Baboon
Markhor
Spectacled Bear
African Spurred Tortoise
Coquerel's Sifaka
and the hot take
Arctic Hare
Pallas's Cat
Hamadryas Baboon
Markhor
Spectacled Bear
African Spurred Tortoise
Coquerel's Sifaka
and the hot take
Arctic Hare
This is what the monkeys have suffered from largely. All the ones we’ve had in game are the ‘extremes’ and the only ‘generic’ monkey we have is the capuchin (and arguably even that should’ve been the tufted capuchin).
It’s like they’re afraid to give us a ‘boring’ monkey. We’ve got a macaque but rather than one of the common zoo species like rhesus or Barbary, we’ve got one of the only taiga-dwelling primates in the Japanese Macaque (pretty much only because it’s famous in pop-culture for hot springs). Then we’ve got the Mandrill, which is probably the most unique African primate looks-wise with its bright face, stub of a tail and bright buttocks, the proboscis monkey which is arguably the most obscure and odd-looking monkey outside maybe a snub-snose and now the baboon which, fair enough is common, but baboons aren’t really your generic monkey - almost more dog-like in their build and movement (I know of at least one African language where their name translates to monkey-dog tbf).
and arguably you could say the front-runner for any final monkey we do get is probably a spider monkey (again popular but these gangly-legged brachiators are hardly another stereotypical monkey).
I may be boring but give me a black and white colobus, a common squirrel monkey, a white-faced saki, a black howler, a Barbary macaque any day!
I mean if that’s Frontier reasoning I still find it a bit silly. Like they try to give us almost many different types of Carnivora and ungulate, why is monkeys were they draw the line for basic animals? Like we have the most milk toast antelope in game, then we also get weirdos like the Nile Lechwe and Saiga.
Honestly my personal theory is either:
- Something about the climbing is difficult, even if revising rigs.
- They don’t like them, and don’t get the fuss
Because for the most part they covered the basics for ungulates and carnivores in base game and early DLCs. They are still trying to cover the basics (well not trying, but they haven't yet) with primates. Which is sad.
I think as someone else said above - we had a fairly flushed out roster of the abc/basic ungulates/big cats etc. in the base and then the DLCs have added the more unusual oddities that sell because they’re more exciting.
Monkeys in the base game were minimal although still strangely the ones we did get were kind of obscurer ones anyway.
It's not, though? One could argue there are vague similarities to the mandrill, but the mandrill is part of an entirely different genus.
They all have the same kind of build though so they are quite morphologically similar and they are fairly closely related
Slight correction, japanese macaques are pretty common and are so world wide, being present on every continent besides africa and 32 holdings in NA and 76 holdings in europe.
Mandrills aswell are decently common and actually on every continent, with 28 NA, 52 Europe and 23 in Asia.
Both stand out more as more "special" monkeys, but they defenetly arnt rare variety picks like the proboscis.
They are both globaly about as common as Gorillas are and i doubt anybody would regard them as anything but a zoo staple
Definitely don't have them in Oceania, either. Except a random-ass colony in Tasmania's Launceton City Park due to animal swaps with a sister city in Japan. For some reason.
According to zootietliste they are also in cudleeton creek gorge wild life park, so its 2 holdings and even if it was just the ones in launceton City Park theyd still be present in oceania
I don't believe they're there anymore, but maybe an Australian can enlighten us. Anyway, it doesn't matter - an animal existing in a single zoo does not really count as 'presence', otherwise we'd say "golden snub-nosed monkeys are present in European zoos" just because one French zoo has them.
What I mean by that is that outliers should not be counted towards patterns, even if the end result is the same.
I mean it is by Definition present.
Its by no means common but it exists, so the chance of more zoos on that continent aquiring some are much higher if there is atleast one zoo with them.
You missed my quick edit.