Last Friday, my girlfriend and I watched a documentary on Animal Planet on the Proboscis Monkey living in Borneo. I've decided to write an article about them although they look ugly, we find them rather special.
The speciality of this breed of monkey is its distinctive long nose and big belly. It reminds us of the various Sesame Street colorful monsters whose nose produced a honking sound when pressed. We suppose they have derived the design from this monkey.
This is a photo of a male proboscis monkey, taken from wikipedia.
Its nose is about 3 inches long and it looked really ugly on its face!!! Well, we did some research on this monkey to understand the purpose of its nose. Normally, the proboscis monkeys stay and travel as a pack of 10-15 with an alpha male leading a group of wives and children. The alpha male is the one with the biggest nose. Apparently, females are attracted to males with big noses because the vocalisation sounded sexier.
This is an upclose photo of its nose, again, this photo is taken from google search.
I guess he must be facing an intruder who came to steal some intimate moments with his wives. He must be so furious, causing blood to rushed in to engorge his red nose.
We like its fuzzy eyebrows as it's quite stylo but again, we think the nose is really ugly isn't it. Something to think about, if you have such a big nose, the nose will probably get a share of everything you eat and drink and it would get in the way of kissing your gal too! Life as a proboscis monkey doesn't seemed to be so fantastic but fortunately, the alpha male is rewarded with many wives! Hehehe...
This is a photo, taken from google search, of a female proboscis monkey.
Her nose is pointed and not that huge. It isn't as special as the male monkeys. Her only purpose in life is to bear offsprings like most female mammals.
After watching this documentary, we've learnt more about the threats faced by the proboscis monkey in Borneo. Having a low count of 7000 in Borneo, they are at high risk of extinction as their habitat are threathen by deforestation. We really hope these special monkeys will not disappear from earth. Though we kept emphasizing how ugly we think their nose look, we still think they must have evolved to have such features for some purpose and they are essential for the balance of ecology.
[Article] Proboscis Monkey
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