USING FRUITS AS WEAPONS 
like beef, but sweeter and richer. From the Isthmus of Panama 
to northern Nicaragua one sees everywhere in the tops of the 
forest trees Geoffroy’s varicolored spider monkey rushing about 
in bands and hunting for insects and fruit. One of the trees 
most frequented is the “‘nispera,” a gutta-percha-yielding kind 
which bears a round fruit about the size of an apple, hard and 
heavy when green. When Belt was living in Nicaragua he soon 
learned to avoid these trees when monkeys were there. 
“‘Sometimes they lay quite quiet until I was passing underneath, when, 
shaking a branch of the nispera tree, they would send down a shower of 
the hard round fruit; but fortunately I was never struck by them. As 
soon as I looked up, they would commence yelping and barking and put- 
ting on the most threatening gestures, breaking off pieces of branches and 
letting them fall, and shaking off more fruit, but never throwing anything, 
simply letting it fall. [Other observers have recorded that they threw 
sticks, etc.] . Sometimes a female would be seen carrying a young one 
on its back, to which it clung with legs and tail, the mother making its way 
along the branches, and leaping from tree to tree, apparently but little in- 
cumbered by its baby. A large black and white eagle is said to prey upon 
them, but I never saw one.” *6 
A closely similar species is common in Guatemala, and north- 
ward as far as San Louis Potosi in Mexico. The howlers, 
arguatoes, or alluates are the largest and most 
powerful of South American apes and the dullest, 
and are peculiar in having no thumb or only a rudimentary one, 
and in having the hyoid bones in the throat (of males only) widely 
enlarged and cavernous, so as to form a curious hollow organ, 
by which their voice is so increased as to be audible two miles. 
Their colors are usually blackish or brown, although one is 
brick-red; but there is much variability, and in some of the 
half-dozen species the sexes differ from one another in dress, 
and the young from both. They feed chiefly on leaves and 
fruit, and are seminocturnal in habit, wandering about in small 
parties and giving their ‘‘harrowing roar” late in the evening 
and again early in the morning, or when rain impends; sup- 
43 
Howlers. 
