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Abstract

India’s Thar Desert is a fascinating area. The name ‘Thar’ comes from the word ‘Tahl’ in local dialect, which denotes the sandy ridges of dunes. Despite the Thar Desert’s inhospitable climatic conditions, it provides dynamic microecosystems for various species of vertebrates. A variety of mammalian species of all sizes, ranging from desert rodents to monkeys, occur in and around the desert. However, the only non-human primate which is adapted to inhabit the fringes of the Thar Desert is the acrobatic Hanuman langur, Presbytis entellus or Semnopithecus entellus, often called the common langur or grey langur. In this chapter, I have described details on the ecology and sociobiology of Hanuman langurs at Jodhpur (Rajasthan State, India), this being the largest city located on the outskirts of the Thar Desert in western India.

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Correspondence to G. Agoramoorthy .

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Agoramoorthy, G. (2009). Primates in the Thar Desert. In: Sivaperuman, C., Baqri, Q.H., Ramaswamy, G., Naseema, M. (eds) Faunal Ecology and Conservation of the Great Indian Desert. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87409-6_14

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