Time to say goodbye to this howler monkey as it disappears into the boa constrictor that has just squeezed it to death. The photo, snapped in a forest in the Brazilian Amazon, is the first documented case of a snake killing and eating a monkey of the Atelid family.
Just before midday, the victim ventured away from her group into a tree where the 2-metre-long snake was hiding. Erika Patrícia Quintino, a researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, heard the doomed monkey making a distress call before witnessing the snake strike. The boa hit its prey in the head, then wrapped itself twice around her body. Although another adult female nearby screamed, then approached to bash the boa with her hands, the snake was undeterred. The monkey then moved away to watch her comrade's grisly end from a safe distance.
According to the researchers, the monkey probably died within 5 minutes. The snake kept gripping its prey and then, 15 minutes later, it started swallowing the monkey head first before hanging from a branch with its tail. By coiling and uncoiling itself for 76 minutes, it gradually consumed the whole animal. Then it returned to the spot where it had attacked the monkey.
The snake was seen in the same tree two days later – normal behaviour for boas, which often wait in one spot for as long as a month. The strategy may be particularly effective in areas like this, where forest cover is patchy, because monkeys tend to use the same routes repeatedly. By clearing more and more of the Amazonian forest, we may be creating fresh hunting ground for monkey-hungry boas.
Journal reference: Primates, DOI: 10.1007/s10329-013-0377-z
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