Colobus polykomos
Silhouette: Yan Wong from drawing in The Century Dictionary (1911) · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~80% in a week >90%
The king colobus (Colobus polykomos), also known as the western black-and-white colobus, is a species of Old World monkey, found in lowland and mountain rainforests in a region stretching from Senegal, through Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to the Ivory Coast. One of five members of the genus Colobus, the black-and-white colobuses, the king colobus is the westernmost species of the group on the continent of Africa. It eats mainly leaves, but also fruits and flowers. Though it is arboreal, it eats primarily on the ground. It lives in small groups consisting of 3 to 4 females and 1 to 3 males, plus their young. These groups maintain distance from one another through territorial calling.
The word 'Colobus' comes from the Greek word for 'mutilated', as all colobus monkeys only have a short stump where the thumb would be. The word 'poly' comes from the Greek word for 'many.' The word 'komos' comes from the Greek celebration of unrestrained singing. A possible subspecies known as C. p. dollmani can be found but is most likely a hybrid with C. vellerosus.
The male king colobus grows to a head-and-body length of 67 cm (26 in), with... Wikipedia →
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Ivory Coast · 2023
© Étienne Leroy · XC960203 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taï National Park | 🇨🇮 Ivory Coast |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Africa Alive! | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | |
| 2 | Schönbrunn Zoo | 🇦🇹 Austria | |
| 3 | Jersey Zoo | 🇯🇪 Jersey | |
| 4 | Apenheul Primate Park | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | |
| 5 | Living Coasts | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
Likely
About 40% of wildlife watchers report a King Colobus sighting in Taï National Park on a given day, based on 8 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 7th most-seen of the 14 mammals we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 80%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April
In that month about 70% of wildlife watchers report a King Colobus in Taï National Park on a given day, against about 10% in May, July and September, the lowest months. October and December–February have too few records to rate.
Between 11 am and 2 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most King Colobus sightings with a recorded time, and about 7 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Taï National Park, in our data
Taï National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate King Colobus sightings: about 40% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Cercopithecidae
The closest relatives of the King Colobus that you can see in Taï National Park (family Cercopithecidae, Old World Monkeys) are Western Red Colobus (about 60%), Smoky Mangabey (about 50%) and Diana Monkey (about 50%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the King Colobus is recorded against all the mammals logged in Taï National Park (8 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
