Stephanie: 🎶 Hello, and welcome to Season 2, Episode 8 of Expecto Podtronum, a podcast dedicated to all things Patronuses.🎶

I’m your host, Stephanie.

Lucy: I’m Lucy.

Carolyn: I’m Carolyn.

Sidney: I’m Sydney and today we will be talking about the capuchin monkey.

Lucy: Yes we will. The capuchin monkeys are commonly found in Central and South America in the tropical forests of Nicaragua and Paraguay. These monkeys have rounded heads and are stockily built with hairy tails and opposable thumbs. The body is 12 to 22 inches, which is 30 to 55 centimeters long, with a tail about the same length.

Sidney: It’s a long tail.

Stephanie: It is a long tail

Lucy: I’m guessing it’s to help with balance and everything in trees when they want to swing and I don’t know [M-hmm]. They weigh only three to nine pounds, which is roughly 1.5 to five kilos. The coloration ranges from pale to dark brown or black with white facial markings. 

capuchin monkeys typically live in social groups ranging from about 10 to 40 individuals, which I thought was quite cool. This fact I love. Their little social group is called a troop.

Stephanie: A troop of capuchin monkeys

Lucy: There just a little troop

Stephanie: That is cute 

Lucy:  Wait, wait, sorry. Are these guys jaunty little fellas?

Carolyn: Yes. they would qualify as jaunty little fellows [Yes] based on size.

Sidney: Are we imagining the troop as a troop of soldiers or an acting troop?

Lucy: I was imagining it as the Trooper Soldiers.

Carolyn: Acting troupe, but I have a theater kid.

Stephanie: I’m going acting troupe because I know what these monkeys can be used for and they’re used a lot in performance based things, which is why I like an acting troupe of monkeys.

Lucy: But imagine them being an army troop dressed in their jaunty little outfits.

[Laughter]

Sidney: That’s very cute

Carolyn: I think if these monkeys are calling them jaunty little outfits, they’re not that kind of troop.

[Laughter]

Sidney: You are right. So right.

Stephanie: Breakdown of the scale. Anything Jack Russell Terrier, or smaller, jaunty little fellow. Anything bigger, not a jaunty little fellow.

Sidney: Good scale.

Carolyn: Yep, it is a permanent scale for now, forever.

Stephanie: capuchins can jump up to nine feet or about three meters in the air, which is how they get from one tree to another.

Lucy: That is, that’s a long jump. 

Stephanie: Yeah, it’s decent vertical.

Lucy: Yeah, can you guys do that?

Sidney: No.

Carolyn: No

Stephanie: I don’t know if it was quite three, but my vertical is definitely close to a foot and a half. Almost two when I was playing volleyball consistently.

Carolyn: Yeah, but that’s a long way off from nine feet.

Lucy: Yeah.

Sidney: It’s still impressive for a human.

[Laughter]

Stephanie: It was maybe a foot and a half but not nine.

Sidney: Yeah, keeping in mind here that these creatures are about one to two feet long.

Lucy: Yeah, that’s a big effort from them. They’re very springy.

Stephanie: Very springy. 

Sidney: Very springy. 

Stephanie: They live most of their lives actually in the top of trees, only really descending to get water. Their typical diet includes fruits, insects, leaves, and small birds. They excel at catching frogs and cracking nuts. 

Sidney: Fun little guys

Stephanie: So much fun. 

Carolyn: Jaunty.

Stephanie: Very jaunty. They can breed anytime during the year, however it is most frequent during the drier seasons. The gestation for a capuchin monkey is about six months and the mom usually will give birth to a single baby. 

They tend to have babies every one to two years and the young usually reach maturity within three to four years. It is a much calmer birth cycle than some of the other animals that we’ve seen that are much more rapid and have many babies at once.

Lucy: The word ‘capuchin’ derives from the Order of Friars [M-hmm] Minor capuchin. These guys wear brown robes with large hoods. Now if you’re like me and were wondering who the Order of Friars Minor capuchin were, well here’s a quick little debrief. 

They are a religious order within the Catholic Church, part of the larger Franciscan family. Who were founded in the 1200s. Known for their simple lifestyle committed to poverty, chastity and obedience. 

When I was researching it, when explorers came across these monkeys, they thought they looked very similar to these Friars because of their hair and the rounded head and everything. Which I found quite interesting. 

The capuchin monkeys are indeed considered the most intelligent of the New World monkeys. This intelligence is reflected in their ability to use tools, learn complex behaviors, and even assist humans with tasks. You probably know them very well from pictures back in the 1800s with monkeys with the little, what they called? 

Sidney: Cymbols.

Lucy: Cymbols, yeah. [Laughter] And they’re also doing tricks out on the streets and everything. So those are those monkeys. Also, we just realized that this monkey, I believe, is in Friends.

[Laughter]

Stephanie: The Friends monkey! Ross’s monkey!

Sidney: What’s its name?

Stephanie: Marcel! 

Lucy: Marcel.

Carolyn: Marcel. I just finished showing that to my kids for the first time, that whole show. 

Sidney: Wow. 

Carolyn: Which they’re probably not old enough for, but I don’t care.

Lucy: These monkeys are also used in laboratories and are known for their ability to prompt and solve and remember tasks.

Sidney: They’re smart little guys too, not just jaunty but also smart.

Lucy: Very, very smart.

Stephanie: This is one of the few species of monkeys that frequently use tools and things to help them.

Lucy: Yeah. 

Carolyn: All right. On to symbolism, everybody. The capuchin monkey symbolism ranges from spiritual insights to other virtues like agility, intelligence, and mischief. They’re known for their wisdom and intelligence, as we said before, incredibly smart. They’re incredibly smart. 

So as a result, they are studied for their advanced problem solving abilities, apparently. [M-hmm] They use tools and cooperate with each other. That ties into most people thinking of them as symbolizing intellect and resourcefulness. The capuchin monkey is thought to encourage people to use their mind effectively or to have a deeper understanding or enlightenment. 

They’re known for being very playful and they’re considered a symbol of fostering creativity, lightheartedness, and joy. Capuchins are considered the creature meant to remind you to live in the moment and not take life so seriously.

Stephanie: Aww.

Lucy: Which we see in that episode of Friends when Marcel puts on that song [Music].  Yeah, the music and the boys just dancing. 

Carolyn: In the Jungle. 

Stephanie: The mighty jungle.

Lucy: And the boys are dancing in the background and they’re like, ‘yeah, we’ll just go with it.’

Carolyn: They are also very adaptable creatures. They’re known for being able to adapt to a wide range of environments. You see, we talked about it above when we were talking about them, that they’re little street performers and stuff. 

They’re thought of as going from the jungle to urban. And they’re symbols of flexibility, survival, and thriving under changing conditions. In South America, where they are native, they are seen as messengers between humans and the spiritual realm. Revered for their connection to the forest and nature. Some see them as guardians of the forest.

 In African mythology, they’re not native to Africa, but their importance comes from the significance of monkeys in Africa in general. Traditions there will see them as tricksters that embody mischievous intelligence that might be where it comes from with the capuchin monkey because again, they’re not native there. 

They would have had to have been brought in. In that respect, I think of Indiana Jones. I’m pretty sure that monkey was a capuchin monkey in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it wouldn’t have been native to Egypt, which is where I think they are at the time. 

Clearly they are well-traveled monkeys.

Lucy: Yeah, I could see them being imported in a lot of spaces, especially to emperors, kings and stuff back then [M-hmm] because they were very intelligent and you’d say show monkeys as well.

Carolyn: Right. [Yeah] They’re also seen as representing cleverness, wit, and outsmarting obstacles. Using intelligence to navigate obstacles. In Western culture, they’re associated with curiosity, intelligence, and resourcefulness, a very common thing across all cultures. They’ve been made popular in books, film, and TV. We’ve already kind of discussed that a little bit with Friends.

Sidney: Here’s a little additional one. I remembered there is a capuchin monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Lucy: Oh my god! Yes! 

Carolyn: That’s right, that’s a capuchin as well. 

Sidney: Yes Captain Barbossa has a capuchin monkey.

Carolyn: I might be dating myself as really old too, but I… 

Sidney: Am I wrong about that? 

Stephanie: No.

Lucy: No, no, no. 

Carolyn: You’re right. I’m pretty sure it is.

Lucy: Now I’m picturing it with the compass and Jack Sparrow going, ‘give it back.’

[Censored]

Sidney: And it wears a little outfit. A jaunty little outfit!

Stephanie: Yes!

Carolyn: I thought of another one too. Did anybody… You guys might not be old enough. Does the movie Monkey Trouble sound familiar to any of you? 

Stephanie: No.

Carolyn: Yeah, I’m old.

Stephanie: Not at all.

Carolyn: It’s a movie about a girl who hides a capuchin monkey as a pet because her dad’s allergic and gets to keep the monkey in the end. 

Lucy: That’s so cool.

Stephanie: How do you not find out?

Carolyn: It was a weird 80s, 90s movie and most of you will… most of our listeners probably won’t even know what it is. I don’t think my kids even know what it is because I don’t think I’ve shown it to them. 

The color of the capuchin monkeys also has a symbolism. The traditional black-bodied white head capuchin would symbolize balance, duality, and the coexistence of light and darkness. 

A golden colored capuchin will symbolize wealth, abundance, and spiritual enlightenment. And then gray and brown, which I did not realize was a color combination of capuchin before finding this article, is linked to being grounded and stable. 

Stephanie: Nice.

Lucy: Interesting. 

Carolyn: That’s pretty much all I have for symbolism.

Sidney: The last little thing we want to cover in our overview of capuchin monkeys is something that we’ve touched on quite a bit already so far. Let’s talk about the personality of a capuchin monkey, the general personality of creatures of this species. 

As we’ve covered so far, they’re pretty smart. They are used in laboratories, in scientific studies because they’re very intelligent and they are also very sociable. They live in their little troops with their little families. It’s very cute. 

They’re assertive and open. They are good problem solvers and they are willing to test things out and figure out how to solve the problems in front of them. They’re also considered sort of neurotic, curious, and manipulative. 

These are the personality traits that are linked to capuchin monkeys in general.

Lucy: Oh my god, manipulative. I did not think of that one being a personality trait for them. But I guess it does make a bit of sense since they’re intelligent and they’re using everything.

Sidney: They’re very smart and tricky. They are known for being sort of mischievous, I guess [M-hmm], and tricky. 

Stephanie: I think they all make sense.

Sidney: I know we’re not going to assign this Patronus to anyone today and that these characters already have Patronus as assigned to them, but honestly, this would have been such a great fit for Fred and George Weasley.

Lucy: That’s what I was thinking as well [Yeah].

Carolyn: Or at least one of them, because if you listened to our previous episode, we did discuss this in twins, that they don’t have to have the same Patronus.

Sidney: That’s true.

Stephanie: Stephanie likes it better that they don’t. [Laughter] No, I agree though. This would be a great… I feel if we had to pick a twin, Fred.

Sidney: I agree. 

Carolyn: That’s what I was thinking. 

Lucy: Yes.

Sidney: Because Fred is more of the ringleader. He’s always the one that’s starting things and he’s the one who starts the sentence and starts the drama and he’s the one who seems [M-hmm] to be the ringleader of most of their mischief. I would agree with that [M-hmm].

Carolyn: I think my headcanon now is going to be capuchin for Fred, Magpie for George.

Sidney: I like that.

Carolyn: Because both are intelligent creatures.

Sidney: Oh yea.

Lucy: I always thought fox for one of them. In a similar vein to the monkey, they’re mischievous.

Carolyn: You said that in the Magpie episode.

Lucy: I say that all the time. My headcanon is that one of them is a fox. And I think fanfiction did that to me.

[Laughter]

Sidney: Oh yeah.

Stephanie: When in doubt, blame fanfiction.

Lucy: Yeah. When you read a good fanfiction, that just becomes canon. 

[Laughter]

Sidney: That’s true.

Stephanie: That’s fair, technically this episode we should be doing Patronus Feud!

[🎶Can this Patronus defend its status against today’s challenger? Find out on Patronus Feud.🎶] 

Stephanie: Quick recap, I went back and I looked at the list of Patronuses that we’re going to be covering over the course of our roughly five seasons. And there is one additional monkey and it is the Orangutan. [And that’s it] Which we will be covering in a later season. So this monkey and the Orangutan are the only two monkeys that were chosen by JK for this list. Why?

Sidney: That’s very interesting.

Stephanie: This monkey. Like Orangutans? I get it, we’ll discuss that later. Not touching that topic right now.

Carolyn: Right.

Stephanie:  But my thought was, why not a Gorilla? Why not something big? I understand that they’re smart and resourceful, but they’re not strong, 

Carolyn: Why not a chimp? 

Stephanie: Not protective, So yeah, a chimp. 

Carolyn: There’s so many breeds of monkeys. A Gorilla is not technically a monkey. {Yeah] It’s its own thing. 

Stephanie: It’s monkey-esque. That’s where my head went. Something big and bulky and strong.

Carolyn: I think Liz will die a little inside if we don’t at least say that a gorilla is not technically a monkey. 

Sidney: It’s a great ape.

Carolyn: It’s a great ape.

Sidney: Shout out Liz. 

Carolyn: So we said it. Shout out Liz. But why not? Yeah, there’s so many different breeds of monkeys. Why those two?

Sidney: I have a little counterpoint here. Rather than why did we pick these two? I want to ask why don’t we have more monkeys on the list? Because we’ve discussed how monkeys are sort of ubiquitous. 

They’re all around the world. Every continent has some kind of monkey in it. So why… And they’re very important to many countries and many cultures’ mythologies. Why are there not more monkeys on this list?

Lucy: Yeah. Well, they’re also very important to us […monkey] {Yes] because we are very closely related to them. {Yeah] Well, monkeys and apes.

Stephanie: We have a monkey in North America?

Sidney: Monkeys were native to North America a long time ago, but they went extinct. 

Stephanie: Okay.

Sidney: We don’t currently have any wild native monkeys in North America. Quick correction to that. 

Stephanie: That’s fine. 

Sidney: Not correction, just addition.

Stephanie: I was curious and I was like, ‘I don’t want to sound completely stupid to our listeners, but I have to ask.’

Sidney: Yeah, thank you. [Laughter]

Carolyn: The list of ‘acceptable or approved or official’ or whatever term you want to put on this makes no sense. We’ve got capuchin monkeys from South America, Orangutans I think are native mostly to Asia. Yeah-ish?

Sidney: Yeah. I need a quick interruption. Orangutan. Orangutan. 

Carolyn: I’m sorry. 

Sidney: Let’s all say it. Orangutan. 

Lucy: Orangutan. 

Stephanie: Orangutan.

Sidney: There’s no G in it. 

Carolyn: Orangutan. Thank you. Orangutan. 

Sidney: Sorry. Continue.

Carolyn: I got something else on my brain, think, is why I’m… orangutan is Asia, yes? I don’t know. We’re gonna get to that in that episode. I’m not gonna worry about that right now. But it’s not England. 

Stephanie: It’s not a European monkey.

Carolyn: It’s not a European monkey.

Sidney:  Orangutans are native to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Carolyn: Asia, I was right. [Yeah] Okay, I’ll take it. [Laughter] All right, we’re gonna really talk about them in their episode. I do not want to drag them into this, but my point being, why those two? Why not anything else? There aren’t any native to England. [Laughter]

Stephanie: Yeah, I would say a lot of the other things we have is, like we’ve been speculating, that they are animals that were regularly available, accessible, common to…

Carolyn: more traveled?

Sidney: Widely known.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Lucy:  I like the idea that the author watched the episode of Friends and went, I want that monkey.

[Laughter]

Sidney: That’s very funny.

Carolyn: You know what? That works for me.

Lucy: It came out around the same time.

Sidney: I think my great aunt used to have a capuchin monkey.

Carolyn: Oh my god, that’s kind of funny.

Sidney: Yeah, anyway, yeah, I kind of get the sense that what we’re going for with the “official Patronuses list” and people who are listening can surely hear my scary quotes on that. The “official Patronuses list.” 

I don’t think it’s necessarily animals that make sense for covering the whole range of personality types that might be needed for Patronuses. And I don’t think it’s necessarily animals that are native to the local region.

I think the goal was to get a general selection of the animals that you could see in a zoo anywhere on the planet.

Stephanie: Ok. Then, but still, why this monkey? There’s lots of other ones. 

Sidney: I don’t know. [Laughter] I can’t defend that.

Carolyn: Also, this is Patronus Feud, so who do we put up against it?

Sidney: Chimpanze. 

Stephanie: See!? Better candidate. 

Lucy: I like Marcel. I reckon Marcel can win. 

Sidney: Or spider monkey.

Lucy:  Spider monkey.

Carolyn: Oh, I like Spider monkey.

Sidney: I said that because I always think about the scene in Twilight where he says ‘hang on, spider monkey.’

Carolyn: I forgot about that scene.

Sidney: How could you? [Laughter]

Lucy: I see that the spider monkeys are quite similar to the capuchin monkeys [Yeah] in size and shape just from the photos.

Carolyn: How about a baboon? Could it be a baboon? [Maybe] I mean, those are the smart ones from the Lion King. He’s the high priest and stuff. Maybe it’s important. Spiritual already. 

Stephanie: I feel like a baboon…

Carolyn: He holds up Simba.

[Laughter]

Stephanie: I feel that’s a more likely Patronus than a capuchin or even maybe a spider monkey.

Sidney: I’m reading the Wikipedia.

[Laughter]

Stephanie: Yeah, you got me beat.

Sidney: Here’s a little thought from me. Something that could have been done if the person behind the Patronus list was someone who really cared deeply about the world around them. 

One method that they could have taken for choosing animals was they could have chosen endangered animals to help raise awareness and connection between fans of their media and these animals. This is not something that the- 

Carolyn: You’re being too logical. 

Sidney: This is not something that the author of Harry Potter considered, it seems. But if we’re talking about Spider monkeys, Spider monkeys are endangered. The Brown Spider monkey is critically endangered. 

So, if we had a whole generation of people and like 1/50 of them were very personally attached to the spider monkey, maybe it could have done something for them by now. Who knows?

Lucy: Also just getting into native animals in certain parts of the world. There’s only one animal for Australia and it’s not even our national animal.

Sidney: Capuchins are not endangered, so that whole spiel was not pointless. Carry on. [Laughter]

Carolyn: We agree that a different monkey is better.

Stephanie: I feel it should have been a different monkey. I feel any monkey would have beaten the capuchin in a head to head comparison.

Carolyn: Ok.

Sidney: I like the capuchin, but I think a Chimp would have made more sense probably if you’re only gonna pick one monkey.

Carolyn: Fair

Sidney: But that’s that. Hopefully everyone enjoyed our discussion about capuchin monkeys this week. Join us next week when we will talk about another magical creature from the world of Harry Potter, the Occamy. 

Signing off today, you can find us as always on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram at ExpectoPodtronum. Find us on Twitter at ExpectoPod and you can support the show at Patreon if you visit patreon.com/ExpectoPodtronum. 

We would love to hear from any of you so please send us a patronus to any of our social media outlets or email us at expectopodtronum@gmail.com. You can also get in touch with us by leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts. 

Thank you for joining us and signing off today. I’m Sydney.

Lucy: I’m Lucy.

Carolyn: I’m Carolyn.

Stephanie: And always remember, a piece of chocolate a day will keep the dementors away.

“Food Show” by Music_For_Videos, Anastasia Kir — “Movie Score A” by DHy-Nez, Denita Smith — “Excuse me Cat” by geoffharvey, Geoff Harvey — “The Classical” by Music_For_Videos, Anastasia Kir — “Uplifting Celebration” by makesoundmusic, Mike Kripak — “Mysterious Music: Light Mystical Background Music for Short Video/Vlog” by White Records, Maksym Dudchyk — “Telling the Story” by goeffharvey, Geoff Harvey