page_title: White-headed capuchin
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: White-headed capuchin / Behavior / Diet
caption_attribution_description: White-faced capuchin monkey in Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica
context_page_description: The white-headed capuchin is a medium-sized New World monkey of the family Cebidae, subfamily Cebinae. It is also known as the white-faced capuchin or the white-throated capuchin. It comes from the forests of Central America. It also lives in the extreme northwestern part of South America. The white-headed Capuchin is important to rain forests because of its role in dispersing seeds and pollen.
  In recent years the species has become popular in North American media. It is a very intelligent monkey and has been trained to assist paraplegic people.
  The monkey is medium-sized. It can weigh up to 3.9 kg. The color is mostly black but they have a pink face. They also have white on the front part of the body. It has a distinctive prehensile tail that is coiled up and is used to help support the monkey on a branch.
  In the wild, the white-headed capuchin can live in many different types of forest. They can eat many different types of food, like fruit, other plants, insects, and small vertebrates. It lives in troops that can have more than 20 animals, both males and females. It is noted for its tool use. They can rub plants over their fur in using herbal medicine.
context_section_description: The white-headed capuchin is an omnivore.  Its primary foods are fruit and insects.  It forages at all levels of the forest, and also forages on the ground.  Methods for finding food include stripping bark off of trees, searching through leaf litter, breaking dead tree branches, rolling over rocks, and using stones as anvils to crack hard fruits.  Its prehensile tail assists with feeding, helping support the monkey when foraging for food below the branches.
  Fruit can make up between 50% and 67% or more of the capuchin's diet.  In one study in Panama, white-headed capuchins ate 95 different fruit species.  Among its favorite fruits are figs from the family Moraceae, mangos and related fruits from the family Anacardiaceae, the bean-like fruits from the family Leguminosae and fruits from the family Rubiaceae.  It generally only eats ripe fruit, testing for ripeness by smelling, tasting and prodding the fruit.  It typically eats only the pulp and juice, spitting out the seeds and fibers.  Other plant matter eaten includes flowers, young leaves, seeds of certain plants, and bromeliads.  It also uses the bromelids as a water source, drinking the water that gets trapped inside.  In Carara National Park the capuchins have a varied diet in addition to the above of banana fruits and flowers, heliconia seeds, huevos de caballo fruits and anacardiaceae stems.
  Insect prey eaten includes beetle larvae, butterfly and moth caterpillars, ants, wasps, and ant and wasp larvae.  It also eats larger prey, such as birds, bird eggs, frogs, lizards, crabs, mollusks and small mammals.  The population in Guanacaste, Costa Rica in particular is noted for hunting squirrels, magpies, White-crowned Parrots and baby coatis. The amount of vertebrate prey eaten varies by troop.  Even neighboring troops can show significant differences in their diets.
  The diet can vary between the rainy and dry season.  For example, in Guanacaste, Costa Rica the white-headed capuchin can eat a wide variety of fruits as well as caterpillars in the early rainy season (June to November).  But during the dry season, only figs and a few other types of fruit are available.  During the dry season, chitinous insects, ant and wasp larvae and vertebrates become a particularly important part of the white-headed capuchin's diet.  Access to water can also become an issue during the dry season.  The white-headed capuchin likes to drink daily, so in forests where water holes dry up during the dry season, there can be competition between troops over access to the remaining water holes.
caption: Foraging in the trees
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK Z650 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "230", "Image YResolution": "230", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "179", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "37/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:05:30 08:15:03", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:05:30 08:15:03", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "43/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "63", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1202", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "8345", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "160", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "380", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}