The mountain fish is the largest monkey. By nature, they live in seclusion in the African equatorial rainforest; females and children live in groups, while males live alone outside of the breeding season.
The black-faced long-tailed monkey, the most widely distributed monkey in Africa, lives in sub-Saharan Africa.
Like mountain fish or black-faced long-tailed monkeys, many African primates show off their brightly colored eggs.
Adding a little pop color to the plain outfit is really eye-catching! Of course, this finishing touch can only be effective at the right position.
Old-world monkeys like the Red Monkey, the Mountain Fish, the Black-Faced Long-tailed Monkey, the Pygmy Long-tailed Monkey and the Lomami Long-tailed Monkey are unusual for male eggs: Why blue?
The New World in biogeography generally refers to the American continent, which belongs to the world of "new" discoveries of geographical discoveries, while the Old World is Europe, Africa and Asia; unlike wine, which is distinguished by the history of the appellation, the new world referred to by wine refers to new cultivation areas outside Europe, including New Australia and Asia in addition to the Americas.
What's wrong with the blue?
Speaking of which, this blue egg is not the kind of blue egg that causes pain due to the continuous retention of blood in the testicle after mating.
Fred Bakwich, a wildlife scientist at Kyoto University in Japan, wrote: "This blue color is also different from primates such as baboons, because the red external genitalia caused by Hormon are different, and although we know very little about the cause of this blue, we tend to think that it is related to sexual selection." In the case of mountain fish, for example, the color of their bodies is closely related to social status."
Native to the equatorial African rainforest, the vivid red and blue makeup on the males' faces is perfectly matching their eye-catching buttocks colors, while the more distinctive faces, buttocks and vulva colors correspond to the increasingly noble social status of the male. One study pointed out that male mountain bass will measure each other's "weight" by assessing each other's color, and the brighter the red, the better the other side's readiness, and if they can "retreat from difficulties", the two sides will save a big fight. In addition, females also prefer more colorful males.
Jennifer Danziquimo, a bioanthropologist at a public university in Charles Town, West Virginia, said: "The black-faced long-tailed monkey that lives in East Africa, the more intense the blue on the male scrotum, the more aggressive it is, and the more likely it is to bully young people of the same sex."
Bakvich added: "Unlike the mountain fish and the red monkeys of the Central African steppes, the black-faced long-tailed monkeys like to show off their bright blue eggs. Put it this way, the greater the color contrast and size of the scrotum, the more attractive the sexual characteristics seem to be; like the peacock's striking tail. The brighter the male's scrotum, the greater the attraction to the female. In the case of the black-faced long-tailed monkey, the testicle can grow to twice the size of the usual during the breeding season."
So how exactly do these primates turn their eggs blue? Bakvich explains: "On a molecular scale, this blue color stems from the Tynd ear effect. According to studies, these blue skins are made up of unusually neat collagen fibers, and can therefore scatter light to highlight the blue; and because these fibers are so delicately arranged, if you slightly change the size of the fibers or the distance they are arranged from each other, just one millionth of an inch of change is enough to produce a very different color. 」
That's right, these monkeys can show you more than this "blue" color.
African primates, the Lomami long-tailed monkey, have a bright blue scrotum and buttocks, but after death they will turn milky white due to dry skin. Not only that, the scrotum of the red monkey is aqua blue, and the adult black-faced long-tailed monkey is turquoise green.
"In fact, all male black-faced long-tailed monkeys start with a dull, grayish blue color of their scrotums, and don't begin to change until puberty," Quimo said. For example, the green monkey, a long-tailed monkey that originated in West Africa and later spread to the West Indies with the slave trade, did not turn its scrotum into an almost white pale blue color until it became an adult.
So colorful, but it is really a male "baby egg".