New monkey species discovered in Africa
19:00 19 May 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Bob Holmes
The new monkey species emits a distinctive low-pitched “honk-bark” (Image: Tim Davenport/WCS)
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A new monkey species has been found in the highland forests of Tanzania. The monkey was discovered almost simultaneously by two research teams on separate mountain ranges and is the first new African monkey to be found in more than 20 years. It also instantly becomes one of the rarest and most critically endangered primates on Earth.
Researchers led by Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s southern highlands conservation programme in Tanzania first heard of the new monkey in stories told by local villagers. They began searching immediately, but took nearly a year to get a clear enough look at the shy, tree-dwelling creature to confirm that it was a new species of mangabey, a group of monkeys closely related to baboons.
A few months later, a second group of researchers stumbled upon a second population of the monkey while searching for a different mangabey species in the Udzungwa Mountains, about 350 kilometres to the northeast. The discovery took them completely by surprise. “The local people were completely unaware of it,” says Trevor Jones, an independent wildlife biologist then working for Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains National Park.
Honk-bark, whoop-gobble
The new monkey is a bit larger than a baboon, with long cheek whiskers and a tall crest of stiff, upright hair atop its head. It also makes a distinctive call, which the researchers describe as a “honk-bark”, very different from the “whoop-gobble” calls of other mangabeys.
To have gone unnoticed for so long, the highland mangabey - Lophocebus kipunji - must be extremely rare, researchers infer. “We can say fairly confidently there are less than a thousand animals,” says Jones. That should earn the species a prominent spot among the world’s most endangered primates.
The Udzungwa Mountains, where one the two populations was discovered, is already high on conservationists’ priority lists for its rich collection of species found nowhere else. But conservationists may find they need to raise their rating for the second area. “It makes a big difference in how people will view the southern highlands,” says co-discoverer Thomas Butynski, director of East African biodiversity hotspots for Conservation International in Nairobi, Kenya.
Journal reference: Science (vol 308, p 1161)
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