Colobus Congoensis: Fifth New Monkey Species Identified In Africa The Last 75 Years | WOA | WION

[00:00:00]Now, a monkey with striking orange lips and a black furry coat, as you can see here, has been officially recognized as a new species in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

[00:00:13]It was first spotted back in 2008, but at the time, researchers only managed to capture a blurry photograph, leaving many questions unanswered.

[00:00:28]>> [music] >> An international team of researchers described the monkey in their paper, a remarkable new species of Colobus monkey from the Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, calling it Colobus congensis, and mentioned [music] that it is commonly known as Likwela by communities living in the region.

[00:00:47]>> [music] >> So, the Likwela monkey, the the new species that we've identified, is a a Colobus monkey living high in the canopy of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a remarkable monkey. It is covered in all black plumage with this orange cream um border around its mouth that's just magnificent when it when it calls.

[00:01:12]>> According [music] to the paper, the team made 114 observations between 2018 and 2022 of the rare and cryptic monkey, [music] and said it is largely restricted to high closed canopy forest and on deep clay pediments and islands of terra firme forest. [music] The small monkey with black fur and a striking orange cream patch surrounding the mouth is found [music] in east central DRC.

[00:01:35]The team proposed a preliminary IUCN Red List classification [music] of endangered for the monkey based on its small range area and population size, coupled [music] with the projected impact of increased hunting pressure and habitat conversion.

[00:01:49]>> And morphology, they could find some differences in terms of the teeth, the canine, the size, all of that. And this is how we came up with all um, strong evidence that this wasn't just, um, subspecies but this is a species because just with what we had before we couldn't tell the difference if it was a species or a subspecies but with all this line of evidence we are we feel strong enough and to prove that this is actually, uh, species itself.

[00:02:16]>> The discovery marks only the fifth new monkey species identified in Africa in the last 75 years. It took them many years to identify this new species as it [music] is a rather shy animal and only occurs in a densely forested area about 1,700 square kilometers in size between two rivers. In 2008, researchers took a partially obscured [music] photo of a monkey they could not identify. 10 years later, they came across it again and started studying it in earnest using a wide range of techniques.

[00:02:49]>> For the equal we only have this tiny population meaning if there is something wrong with, uh, this population, we can lose species easily because you don't have it anywhere except in this tiny restricted place next to the Lomami.

[00:03:05]>> But [music] this is not the first primate to be identified within this conservation area in the Congo Basin.

[00:03:11]>> [music] >> The Lesula monkey was discovered in 2012 on the west bank of the Lomami River.

[00:03:18]Africa Bureau, VOA [music] World is One.