International scientists, including researchers from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and Yale, have identified a new species of monkey with a silky black coat and orange cream skin around its mouth in the rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
While the monkey has been seen before, both by locals who call it “Likweli” in one local dialect and “branch shaker” in another and by conservation field scientists who took a photo in 2008, it was not declared a new species until a paper published July 15 in the journal PLOS One determined they were distinct from other monkeys and named the species Colobus congoenisis.
Co-author of the paper Junior Amboko chose the name to recognize “the Congo Basin’s remarkable natural heritage and, we believe, marking the first primate named after the Democratic Republic of Congo itself - underscoring both its global importance and local pride,” Amboko said in a statement.
The photo in 2008 was far from enough to study the species, not even containing the whole animal, and the Likweli monkey was not seen again until 2018, when field researcher and co-author of the paper, Jean Pierre Kapale, managed to photograph one, according to Smithsonian.
Kapale and his team spent the next 10 months conducting dedicated surveillance patrols and had seven more sightings. More researchers joined in the attempt to discover more about the Likweli, and between 2018 and 2022, researchers recorded 114 field observations of the monkeys.
Researchers describe monkeys as watchful
The monkey has a “quiet and watchful nature,” Kate Detwiler and Junior Amboko, two other coauthors of the paper, told BBC's Discover Wildlife.
“When we encounter a group, the monkeys don’t usually flee as many other primates do. Instead, they climb higher into the canopy and simply watch us. It often feels as though we’re studying each other,” they said.
Researchers also examined skin, skeleton, and tissue samples from three dead monkeys that had been confiscated from hunters.
An FAU statement described the monkey as “draped in glossy black fur with cape-like shoulders, a long sweeping tail and a vivid orange-cream patch around the mouth and nose,” with a “striking, mask-like appearance unlike any known colobus monkey.”
It is also smaller than the other species, weighing only about 15 pounds, about as much as a small dog.
Monkeys provide new insight into monkey evolution
While genetic studies proved that the Likweli monkey was part of the genus Colobus, they also provided new insights into African primate evolution, according to Kate Detwiler, Ph.D., co-author and associate professor at FAU.
“Its closest known relative is Colobus satanas, found more than 1,200 kilometers away in west-central Africa. Yet our genetic evidence shows the two species diverged roughly 4 to 5 million years ago, marking one of the oldest known evolutionary splits within the Colobus lineage,” Detwiler said.
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