Almost two decades after an unusual monkey was first sighted in the treetops above a Congo rainforest, an international team of researchers has described it as a new species.
Small, orange-mouthed and living in what is today part of Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the monkey is known as Likweli among the members of the Balanga ethnic group. In scientific annals, it’s now officially described as the Colobus congoensis – the sixth species of the Colobus monkey, all native to Africa.
“Our team evaluated multiple datasets that all reached the same conclusion: Likweli is a distinct species of Colobus monkey we haven’t seen before,” says Julia Arenson, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Anthropology and the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, who co-authored a study that formally recognised the monkey.
“Discovering a primate species is exceptionally rare, especially from populations previously unknown to science.”
A blurry clue in the canopy
