SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 2: Undocumented Species Discovered

Scientists in India announced the discovery of an undocumented species of primates living in the Himalayas in a press release on December 11.

The primates were found in the mountains of western Arunachal Pradesh bordering Tibet and Myanmar. The scientists have dubbed the monkeys the Arunachal macaque (Macaca munzala). A macaque is an Old World short-tailed primate.

The scientists from the Nature Conservation Foundation (India), the Wildlife Conservation Society (New York), the International Snow Leopard Trust (Seattle) and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore) found 14 bands of 10 or fewer monkeys while surveying the area's wildlife. The expedition was funded by the Van Tienhoven Foundation for International Nature Protection, the Netherlands and the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation (UK).

The new species has a distinctively dark face. Although new to science, residents of Tawang and West Kameng districts have long been visited by the deep-forest monkeys. The last macaque discovery was the Indonesian Pagai macaque found in 1903. The last large mammal to be discovered in India was the golden langur (Trachypithecus geei) found by naturalist E. P. Gee in 1953.

A documented account of the discovery made by Dr. Anindya Sinha, Dr. Aparajita Datta, Dr. M. D. Madhusudan and Dr. Charudutt Mishra will soon be published in the International Journal of Primatology.

--Written by Teresa Liao

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