Gray-Cheeked Mangabey
The gray-cheeked mangabey (Lophocebus albigena) is a crested monkey of Central Africa.[1] It feeds in the middle and upper rainforest canopy.[3] Males carry a long pale mantle across the shoulders.
John Edward Gray named the species in 1850.[1] For most of the next century it was read broadly. In 2007 Colin Groves divided the group into four species.[2] Three of those were separated from a narrower L. albigena.
Its signature is the whoop-gobble, a two-part loud call. An air sac outside the larynx amplifies the sound.[3] It carries 500 to 1,200 meters through closed forest.
This animal belongs to the crested mangabeys, genus Lophocebus. See where that sits among the mangabey monkeys. The genus falls inside the Old World monkeys.
Lives in Central African rainforest, west of the Ubangi River. Males call with a whoop-gobble heard over a kilometer away.
- Common NameGray-cheeked Mangabey
- Taxonomy Classification Year1850
- Monkey SizeHead-body 45 to 73 cm (18 to 29 in); tail 67 to 100 cm (26 to 39 in)
- Skin Color(s)Blackish brown coat, pale gray shoulder mantle, black face
- HabitatLowland primary and secondary rainforest, gallery forest, swamp forest
- DietOmnivorous; mainly fruit and seeds, plus insects and small vertebrates
- Native CountriesCameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo
- Five countries hold it: Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.[1] Central African Republic and Republic of the Congo complete it.
- The Ubangi River separates it from Johnston’s mangabey. The Congo River separates it from the black crested mangabey.[3]
- Groups average about 20 animals, ranging from 6 to 30.[3]
- Home ranges run 100 to 400 hectares and overlap heavily.[3]
- Fruit supplies 30 to 60 percent of the diet. Seeds supply 29 to 36 percent.[3]
Gray-Cheeked Mangabey Distribution
)
)
)
)
)Gray-Cheeked Mangabey Guide:
Mangabey Identification
The coat is soft, long and generally blackish brown.[3] Both sexes carry a pale mantle over the shoulders. It shows more strongly in males.
Thin grayish cheek whiskers run out from that mantle.[3] They give the animal both of its common names. The face itself is black.
A short tuft stands partly upright on the crown. The eyebrows rise into two small horns.[3]
- Head-body length is 45 to 73 cm in males. Females measure 50 to 56 cm.[3]
- The tail runs 73 to 100 cm in males.[3] Females measure 67 to 80 cm.
- Males weigh 6.1 to 9 kg. Females weigh 4.7 to 6.5 kg.[3]
- Females are more slender. They develop a bright pink swelling when receptive.[3]
- Albinism has been recorded in this species.[3]
The tail is not prehensile. No Old World monkey can grip with its tail. That trait evolved twice, both times in New World monkeys.[10] This mangabey carries its tail straight up. The tip arches forward over the back.[3]
Range And Habitat
The species holds five countries in Central Africa.[1] Rivers draw most of the edges. It lives south of the Sanaga River in Cameroon.[3]
The Ubangi River marks the eastern limit. West of it the forest belongs to this species. East of it the forest belongs to Johnston’s mangabey.[3]
Habitat is lowland rainforest, both primary and secondary.[3] It also uses gallery forest and some swamp forest. Dense evergreen forest suits it best.
Population densities run 10 to 20 animals per square kilometer.[3] Those counts come from Cameroon and Gabon.
It often travels in mixed parties. Guenons, red colobus and black-and-white colobus join them.[3] In several areas it overlaps the agile mangabey.
Diet And Feeding
Fruit supplies 30 to 60 percent of the diet. Seeds add another 29 to 36 percent.[3] Young leaves, bark, flowers and animal prey fill the rest.
Animal prey matters more than most readers expect. It reached 27 percent of the diet at Dja in Cameroon.[3] Lope in Gabon recorded 25 percent and Mondika 13 percent.
One Dja study followed them from February to December 1998.[6] They fed on 132 plant species over that period. Just five of those gave 45 percent of feeding records.
The same study showed how they handle lean months. When fruit ran short they switched to seeds, flowers and young leaves.[6] They moved into swamp forest and widened the diet.
One caveat on the Dja figures. That reserve may be a contact zone with L. osmani.[3] Hybridization there is considered possible.
The traffic runs both ways. Mangabeys at Dja disperse the seeds of many canopy trees.[7] Seasonal switching like this is a core theme in ecology.
Recorded food plants include the following.[7][11]
- African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis)
- African nutmeg (Pycnanthus angolensis)
- Boleko nut (Ongokea gore)
- Djave (Baillonella toxisperma)
- Inoi nut (Poga oleosa)
- Butter tree (Pentadesma butyracea)
- African teak (Milicia excelsa)
- African mammee-apple (Mammea africana)
- Calabash nutmeg (Monodora myristica)
- Boarwood (Symphonia globulifera)
- Red-fruited stinkwood (Celtis mildbraedii)
- Umbrella tree (Musanga cecropioides)
- Strangler fig (Ficus thonningii)
- Velvet tamarind (Dialium guineense)
- Rattan palm (Eremospatha macrocarpa)
- Raffia palm (Raphia)
Compare that spread with what monkeys eat across the wider group.
Groups And Calls
Groups hold about 20 animals, with a range of 6 to 30.[3] Adults of both sexes are present in numbers. Large groups may carry 6 to 11 adult males.
Home ranges are large, 100 to 400 hectares.[3] They overlap heavily with neighboring groups. Groups tend to avoid each other rather than fight.
At Mondika a group moved about 1,137 meters daily.[3] It used 167 hectares over the course of a year.
Big groups sometimes break apart. Subgroups can travel and feed separately for three weeks.[3] Males usually leave the group they were born into.
The whoop-gobble comes mostly from high-ranking animals.[3] The animal whoops, pauses about five seconds, then gobbles for three. Its lips push forward and the cheeks billow out.
Grunts fill ordinary life, when feeding, resting or traveling.[3] Staccato barks signal surprise instead. Duikers, forest hogs and raptors all set them off.
Activity splits fairly evenly through the day.[3] Groups forage for 42 to 54 percent of it. Travel takes 20 to 28 percent and rest 10 to 28 percent.
Breeding And Lifespan
Females come into season with a bright pink genital swelling.[3] The ovarian cycle lasts about 31 days.
A single young arrives after 184 to 189 days.[3] Births come only every two to four years.
At birth the exposed skin is flesh-colored.[3] That covers the face, the ears and the sitting pads. Those pads are known as ischial callosities.
Weaning happens between seven and ten months.[3] Females mature at three years and males at five to seven.
Interbirth intervals average about 30 months.[3] They shorten if the infant dies. Captive animals have lived past 20 years.
Predators And Defense
Two wild predators are documented. One is the crowned eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus).[3] The other is the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). People hunt the species for meat across much of the range.
The best eagle data come from Kibale in Uganda.[8] Over 37 months researchers recovered 390 prey remains. Those represented at least 85 animals.
Primates dominated that sample. They made up 74 of 90 identified individuals.[8] That is 82 percent.
Mangabeys were a small share of the total. Only two turned up among 53 primates identified to species.[8] At that site they were taken less often than expected.
Defense falls to a single animal. At Kanyawara only four of 24 adult males chased eagles.[9] Each of those four ranked top in his group.
The job carries a cost. Defenders showed 2.25 times higher cortisol the next day.[9] Other males alarm called and showed no such rise.
Read both studies with the taxonomy in mind. Kibale sits in Uganda, outside this species’ range today.[1] Those animals are now placed in a separate species.
A Taxonomic Split
Older sources give this monkey a far wider range. Nigeria and Uganda appear on many of them. Current taxonomy moves those populations elsewhere.[1][2]
Colin Groves did the work in 2007. He used shoulder mantle color and skull shape.[2] Four species came out of the albigena group. Three of them were separated from L. albigena itself.
- A gray mantle stays with the gray-cheeked mangabey, Lophocebus albigena.[3]
- A reddish-brown mantle marks the rusty-mantled mangabey, Lophocebus osmani.[1] It holds Nigeria and Cameroon.
- A brown to straw mantle marks Johnston’s mangabey, Lophocebus johnstoni.[1]
- The Ugandan crested mangabey, Lophocebus ugandae, was split differently.[3] Skull shape and smaller size set it apart.
The genus now holds six species.[1] The black crested mangabey and Opdenbosch’s mangabey are the southern pair. The Congo River separates them from this species.[3]
Boundaries are not perfectly clean. Ranges may overlap in south-eastern Cameroon.[3] Hybridization with L. osmani is possible at Dja.
Not everyone accepts the split. The Mammal Diversity Database calls the arrangement tentative.[1] The IUCN still treats all four as subspecies of one species.[4]
One older claim on this page needs correcting. This monkey is a papionin, in the tribe Papionini.[3] Baboons, macaques and mandrills sit in the same tribe. Cercopithecinae is the subfamily above that, not the family.
This page follows Mammal Diversity Database v2.5. Under that treatment the gray-cheeked mangabey holds five countries. That is why Nigeria and Uganda are absent above.
Conservation Status
The IUCN rates the gray-cheeked mangabey Vulnerable. Maisels, Hart, Olupot and Oates assessed it in 2017.[4] The amended version was published in 2020.[5]
The listing has worsened over time. The Handbook of the Mammals of the World recorded Least Concern.[3]
One caution on the badge above. That assessment uses IUCN taxon 12309, the broad species.[4] The concept still contains johnstoni, osmani and ugandae. So the category is Vulnerable, but the assessed animal is wider.
Hunting for meat is the main pressure.[3] It is occasionally shot as a crop pest. Forest clearance and conversion add to the load.
Trade is regulated under CITES Appendix II.[3] The 1968 African Convention listed it in Class B.
Protected areas carry a useful share of the range.[3] Dja Biosphere Reserve and Lobéké hold it in Cameroon. Lopé and Minkébé cover it in Gabon.
Nouabalé-Ndoki and Odzala protect it in the Republic of the Congo.[3] Dzanga-Ndoki does the same in the Central African Republic. Monte Alen covers it in Equatorial Guinea.
Common Questions
It lives in five Central African countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. Older sources also list Nigeria and Uganda. Those populations are now treated as separate species under current taxonomy.
No. Its tail is long, often longer than the body, but it cannot grip. No Old World monkey has a prehensile tail. That trait evolved twice, both times in New World monkeys. This mangabey carries its tail straight up, with the tip arched forward over the back.
Fruit supplies 30 to 60 percent of the diet and seeds another 29 to 36 percent. Young leaves, bark and flowers fill out the plant side. Insects and small vertebrates matter more than expected, reaching 27 percent at Dja in Cameroon. A study there recorded 132 plant species in the diet.
It is the species-typical loud call of crested mangabeys. The animal whoops, pauses about five seconds, then gobbles for roughly three. An air sac outside the larynx amplifies the sound, which carries 500 to 1,200 meters through closed forest. High-ranking animals give it most often.
The crowned eagle and the chimpanzee are the documented wild predators, and people hunt the species for meat. At Kibale in Uganda, crowned eagle nests yielded 390 prey remains over 37 months, representing at least 85 animals. Primates made up 74 of 90 identified individuals, but mangabeys were only two of them.
It is listed as Vulnerable rather than Endangered. The assessment was made in 2017 and amended in 2020. Note that it uses a broader species concept than this page does, one that still includes the Ugandan, Johnston’s and rusty-mantled mangabeys. Hunting for bushmeat and forest clearance are the main threats, and trade is regulated under CITES Appendix II.
Thin grayish cheek whiskers run out from the pale shoulder mantle. The same feature gives it the alternative name white-cheeked mangabey. The Mammal Diversity Database also lists cloaked mangabey, after the mantle itself.
Different Eagle Species include the crowned eagle, a documented predator of this mangabey.
Cite this page
BioExplorer. (2026, October 7). Gray-Cheeked Mangabey. https://www.bioexplorer.net/animals/mammals/monkeys/gray-cheeked-mangabey/