Central American Squirrel Monkey

The Central American squirrel monkey has a restricted distribution in Costa Rica and Panama. It lives only near the Pacific coast. Its range covers Central Pacific Costa Rica in the north through western Panama. It lives in two of Costa Rica's national parks—Manuel Antonio National Park and Corcovado National Park—where it can be seen by visitors, but it is not as commonly seen in these parks as the white-headed capuchin or the mantled howler monkeys. It lives in lowland forests and is restricted to secondary forests and primary forests which have been partially logged. It requires forests with abundant low and mid-level vegetation and has difficulty surviving in tall, mature, undisturbed forests that lack such vegetation. Its specialization for coastal lowland forest may explain its restricted distribution.

The Central American squirrel monkey is omnivorous. Its diet includes insects and insect larvae (especially grasshoppers and caterpillars), spiders, fruit, leaves, bark, flowers, and nectar. It also eats small vertebrates, including bats, birds, lizards, and tree frogs. It finds its food foraging through the lower and middle levels of the forest, typically between 4.5 and 9 metres (15 and 30 feet) high. Two-thirds to three-quarters of each day is spent foraging for food. It has difficulty finding its desired food late in the wet season, when fewer arthropods are available. It has a unique method of capturing tent-making bats. It looks for roosting bats by looking for their tents (which are made of a folded leaf). When it finds a bat it climbs to a higher level and jumps onto the tent from above, attempting to dislodge the bat. If the fallen bat does not fly away in time, the monkey pounces on it on the ground and eats it. The Central American squirrel monkey is an important seed disperser and a pollinator of certain flowers, including the passion flower. While it is not a significant agricultural pest, it does sometimes eat corn, coffee, bananas and mangos. Other fruits eaten include cecropias, legumes, figs, palms, cerillo, quiubra, yayo flaco and wild cashew fruits.