Bale Mountains Monkey

The Bale Mountains vervet monkey is a dietary specialist with African alpine bamboo (Yushania alpina) making up as much as 77% of its diet. This makes the species unique in the genus Chlorocebus as the other five species are dietary generalist species. The diets of Bale monkeys in continuous forests are made up of approximately 10 species of plants; however, populations in fragmented forests have considerably higher dietary diversity and consume up to five times more species. For those populations, bamboo makes up as little as 2% of their diet. It is unclear if this dietary flexibility is due to hybridization from grivet and vervet monkeys or if the species adapts in the absence of bamboo. This dietary flexibility makes the Bale monkey less dependent on its main food source than other dietary specialist species like the koala or giant panda. In areas where Bale monkeys and human settlements co-occur, the monkeys often raid crops for food which can spark retaliatory hunting.