Not that I'm a huge monkey person to begin with, but I have a special fondness for colobus monkeys. They are very pretty monkeys, which certainly is appealing. They tend to be more sedate than many other monkeys, which I attribute in large part to their diet - leaves aren't super nutritious, and a diet of leaves doesn't leave you as much energy to be a jerk as other monkeys. A big part of it, I think, is their faces. They always look so sweetly sad, like the world is one the cusp of falling apart, and they could really use a reassuring hug and a cup of hot cocoa.
This sign from Syracuse's Rosamond Gifford Park Zoo gets it...
A lot of keepers that I know who work with colobus joke about their depression face. I know I did when I worked with them. It's important, though, to remember to look at our biases when working with animals. We need to remember to see them as they are, not as they necessarily appear to us. For example, a "smiling" chimp is not a happy one - it's a scared and/or angry ape. If we were to try to manage our chimps so that they were "smiling" all the time, their welfare would be seriously compromised. On the other hand, if a colobus looks "sad," we shouldn't assume that anything is wrong, unless there is other cause to suspect that there is.
Still, it's nice to have signs, like the one above, to help visitors (who can't help but anthropomorphize primates) know that there's no cause for concern. They're smiling on the inside. Take our word for it.
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