Monkey Population Decreasing
Four monkey species have drastically decreased during the last five years in Costa Rica due to deforestation, agrochemical use, global warming and their capture to use them as pets, denounced Costa Rican academicians Monday.

"Spider Monkeys" for example decreased from 25,000 to 7,000 since 2000 and the "congos" decreased in almost a 50 percent, from 70,000 to 36,800, according to biologists from Costa Rican University and UCR and National University UNA.

Ronald Sanchez, UCR specialist, admitted that there is no precise information on the decrease of  the "titi" and "white-face monkeys", but he coincided with other experts on the great difficulties they confront due to primary forests reduction.

Costa Rican scientists discovered during the last several years several health problems that affect monkeys like: eye cataracts, loss of melanin (responsible for the skin color) and diseases like malaria and Venezuelan tropical encephalitis, the last one caused the death of dozens of monkeys in the national park Corcovado in 2003.