The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma/Mammalia/Class Mammalia/Subclass Eutheria/Order Primates/Suborder Anthropoidea/Family Cercopithecidæ/Subfamily Cercopithecinæ/Genus Macacus/Macacus arctoides
6. Macacus arctoides. The brown stump-tailed Monkey.
- Macacus arctoides, Is. Geoffr. Mag. Zool. 1833, Cl. i, pl. 11; Murie, P. Z. S. 1872, p. 770; Anderson, An. Zool. Res. p. 45, pls, i, ii; id. Cat. p. 74.
- Papio melanotus, Ogilby, P. Z. S. 1839, p. 31.
- Macacus brunneus, Anderson, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 628; id. 1872, p. 203, pl. xii (juv.).
- Inuus speciosus, Blyth, Mam. Birds Burma, p. 6.
Hair on head and shoulders very long, as much as 4½ inches in adults. Tail very short, almost rudimentary, sparsely clad with hair or naked in old animals; buttocks naked for some distance around callosities. Caudal vertebræ 11 (probably fewer in some individuals).
Colour. Dark brown; in some specimens blackish brown above, paler below. In the young the hairs are the sauje tint throughout, in older individuals the terminal portion of each hair is very closely and minutely annulated with several alternating rings of golden yellow and dark brown. Eace and buttocks bright red.
Dimensions. Probably about 2 feet in length, the tail only one to two inches. No trustworthy measurements of adults are recorded. An adult male skull measures 5·3 inches in extreme length, 3·7 in basal length, and 3·5 in zygomatic breadth.
Distribution. Not very well ascertained. Apparently this monkey is found in some of the hill-ranges south of Assam, and there is a specimen in the Calcutta Museum said to have been brought from Tipperah. To the eastward this form is found in the Kakhyen hills of Upper Burma and also in Cochin China.
Habits. Nothing is definitely known of this monkey in the wild state. It is said to be a hill species.
Blyth refers the present form to M. speciosus of F. Cuvier, a name generally applied to a Japanese species, and Anderson is disposed to concur. M. speciosus is said by Temminck ('Fauna Japonica') to have been founded on a drawing by Diard or Duvaucel of a monkey living at Barrackpur near Calcutta. The figure resembles a pig-tailed Monkey (M. nemestrinus) with most of its tail cut off as much as it does either M. arctoides or the Japanese species. I agree Aith Anderson that the name M. speciosus should be dropped.
A stump-tailed monkey of rufous-brown coloration, said to be from the Malay Peninsula, has been named M. rufescens by Anderson (P. Z. S. 1872, pp. 204, 495, pl. xxiv); and two other forms, M. maurus and M. ocreatus, inhabit some of the Malay islands, A very large form, M. tibetanus, has been described from Moupin, in Eastern Tibet, by A. M.-Edwards. In his latest work Anderson has united this form to M. arctoides.
I am informed by Mr. W. Davison that he had for some time alive a monkey of a kind apparently allied to M. arctoides, which had been captured by a shikari near Bankasun in the extreme south of Tenasserim. Mr. Davison has also seen a second specimen, a female, his own being a male. Unfortunately the first specimen was subsequently lost. These animals were of a pale cream-colour throughout, slightly tinged with rusty on the shoulders and back; face and hands flesh-coloured. The tail was quite rudimentary, less than an inch long, and turned on one side in both specimens, so that at the first glance both appeared to be tailless. Both were very small, although shown to be adults by the teeth,—each being not above 15 inches high when it stood erect. They had a sharp piercing voice, and exhaled a peculiar fetid odour. The one kept by Mr. Davison was excessively insectivorous, and preferred insects to fruit or bread. These monkeys apparently belonged to an undescribed species.
It is quite possible, too, that the large tailless ape seen by Mr. Davison and Captain Bingham in the Tenasserim mountains, and described in the notes on Hylobates lar (ante, p. 9), may be an ally of M. arctoides, though apparently much larger than that species.