Moor macaque

The Moor macaque (Macaca maura) is a macaque species with brown/black body fur with a pale rump patch and pink bare skin on the rump. It has ischial callosities, which are oval-shaped. It is about 50–58.5 cm long, and eats figs, bamboo seeds, buds, sprouts, invertebrates and cereals in tropical rainforests. It is sometimes called "dog-ape" because of its dog-like muzzle, although it is no more closely related to apes than any other Old World monkey is. It is endemic to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, which is an important biodiversity hotspot.

The Moor macaque is threatened mostly due to habitat loss from an expanding human population and deforestation to increase agricultural land area. The Macaca maura population is estimated to have decreased from 56,000 in 1983 to under 10,000 in 1994. In 1992, Supriatna et al. 1992 conducted an extensive survey and found 6.3–63.2 individuals/km2. They usually live in groups of 15-40 individuals, with female philopatry and male dispersal and they are diurnal and semi-terrestrial. They spend a lot of their time in trees foraging and on the ground travelling.

According to the Behavioural Data collection done on 2 groups of Moor macaques in the Bantimurung Bulusaraung National Park in South Sulawesi, this species spends most of their time feeding in places where food resources are abundant. The results also show that Moor macaques tend to spend more time foraging as the group size increases as they spend less time in alertness.

The population of this species is highly endangered due to serious anthropogenic activities like agriculture and tourism, which contribute to its habitat loss. Like many other frugivorous primates, Moor macaques have made significant contributions to the environment, helping to support high densities of seedlings and saplings as well as the process of gene flow among plant populations. This is crucial for sustaining forest regeneration and restoring vegetation in degraded forests.

This species has been on the IUCN Red list of threatened species (A2cd) since 2015.

From the Wikipedia article “Moor macaque” (en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moor_macaque&oldid=1371997616), by Wikipedia contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). This block is kept separate from our own text.