Macaca nigra

Status and Conservation. CITES Appendix II. Classified as Critically Endangered on The IUCN Red List. The Crested Macaque is the most threatened of the seven species of macaques endemic to the island of Sulawesi. Crested Macaques have suffered severe hunting pressure and a widespread decline of their habitat. Consumption of monkeys and other wildlife is a longstanding tradition in ethnic groups of north-eastern Sulawesi and may have originally been sustainable. The human population in the area has substantially increased over the last decades, however, boosted by transmigration within Indonesia. This has increased hunting and led to the widespread conversion of rainforests for agricultural land and infrastructure. Legal and illegal logging and mining add to the rapid shrinking and fragmentation of natural forests, with an unknown effect on the separated small macaque populations remaining. Bushmeat hunting is not sustainable anymore and causes the rapid decline of all wildlife and, in particular, macaques. Tangkoko Batuangus Nature Reserve, although only ¢. 3600 ha, seems to be the home of the largest population of Crested Macaques within its native distribution. Nevertheless, recent surveys suggest that the population in this protected area has suffered a decline of almost 85 % since 1978. Current conservation and research activities, therefore, specifically focus on this population. A more viable population of Crested Macaques inhabits the island of Bacan, North Moluccas, where they have been introduced by humans. Given food taboos of the island’s people, the survival of this population may be better secured. The conservational value of the Bacan macaques is debatable because the island was not part of the species’ original distribution and, more importantly, the small founder population can be expected to have limited genetic variability.

Sumber: Cercopithecidae

Descriptive notes. Head-body 50 - 57 cm (males) and 44.5 - 55 cm (females), tail 1.5 - 2.5 cm; weight 10.2 - 13 kg (males) and 5.5 - 8 kg (females). Fur of the Crested Macaque is plain dark brown to blackish, as is the bare or short-haired facial skin. Infants are born with pinkish faces that turn black in the first months oflife. Hairs of the vertex are elongated (5 - 15 cm), forming an erectile crest. Ischial callosities are reniform, bright pinkish, and subdivided by a transverse furrow; in contrast, they are gray and form an elongated oval in the Gorontalo Macaque (M. nigrescens). The skull exhibits strongly developed supramaxillary ridges that are most pronounced in adult males. Posterior roots of these ridges are broadened and elevated, which gives the face of the male Crested Macaque a distinct appearance among the Sulawesi macaques (but see the Gorontalo Macaque). Male scrota and anuses have a red coloration, which has never been described for other Sulawesi macaques but may exist in at least some of them (e. g. Moor Macaque, M. maura). The Gorontalo Macaque differs from the Crested Macaque in its general body color being medium to dark brown, and its head, arms, legs, and ventral surface being black, contrasting with the color of the body. They are the same color in the Crested Macaque.

Sumber: Cercopithecidae