Comments by "MaximumCapacityBS" (@ArmoredProtagonist999) on "Why Aren't There Snow Monkeys in North America or Europe?" video.
-
6
-
4
-
It might have to do with diet since it has a major role in monkeys living in temperate environments. The cold thriving old world monkeys like the snub nosed monkey has adapted a multi chambered stomach to digest and extract as much nutrients from the pine needles, moss, and lichen they eat in high elevations. The Japanese macaques also had enough time to adapt to eat a more broad and seasonally varied diet like bark off trees, nuts, dirt, and underground plant roots during the fall and winter or leaves, fruits, and small invertebrates during the warmer months.
I would say the more varied, monsoonal influenced seasons of East Asia combined with the time to adapt to eating a more varied diet helped monkeys thrive in temperature environments.
In particular, Mexico happens to have the most diverse subtropical/ tropical coniferous forests in the world. If a monkey could adapt to specialize its diet on coniferous needles then there would have been a filled in niche in those mountain forests (if given the time to adapt). Mexico also has extensive dry tropical forests in the Pacific facing side of the country yet there are no monkeys living in the heavily forested, tropical Pacific states like Guerrero, southern parts of Michoacán, or most of Oaxaca. Why is that? Honestly I can’t say for certain but most likely they have grown highly dependent to a year round wet, humid jungle environment with year round abundance of food like fruits, leaves and insects unlike the cold glacial capped mountains or the dry season tropical forests facing the Pacific Ocean.
Also, the Spider Monkeys are particularly attracted to the more higher canopy levels in a tropical rainforest as opposed to the dry tropical forests where the trees are less tall. Mexican howler monkeys in southeastern Mexico are more adapted and do occupy the dry forests of Tabasco and Campeche but the dry forests on the Pacific side has a dry season that runs a more longer duration as opposed to the shorter dry season facing the Gulf of Mexico. There probably wasn’t any need for them to expand their range as long as they kept to the constantly lush, wet forested lowlands that mostly faced the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean as opposed to the more drier Pacific facing side.
1