White-Faced or Capuchin Monkey CR

Capuchins have the most versatile diet of New World monkeys. Aside from resting, almost all of their time is spent traveling and foraging, beginning at daybreak and moving until they stop for the night. They forage from the forest floor up to the canopy, and the troop can spread far out laterally as well as they forage. When it is available, they will travel to a spring or other sources to drink water. Because they keep a diverse diet, their actions strongly affect the vegetative populations in their habitats. They may do this by dispersing seeds of some species, pruning others, which stimulates branching, and eating insects that would otherwise damage the plants. In other cases, their determined actions have negative effects. For example, while eating the ant colonies that live inside acacia trees, capuchins can destroy the plants to get to the ants.