A SPECIES of monkey with a mohican, long whiskers and a distinctive honking bark has been discovered on the slopes of a Tanzanian volcano.

Scientists said that the highland mangabey, described as a large, striking animal, had been “right under our noses” for the past 100 years. John G. Robinson, director of international conservation programmes for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), said: “This new species of monkey should serve as a living symbol that there is hope in protecting not only wild places like Tanzania’s Southern Highlands, but the wonder and mystery they contain.”

The discovery of the highland mangabey is the first in more than 20 years of a previously unknown species of African monkey. It is brown, with a long crest of hair, elongated whiskers and an off-white belly and tail. It has a thick coat of fur that may help it to survive at altitudes of 8,000ft (2,450m), where temperatures frequently drop below freezing.

The authors of a paper in Science magazine describe the monkey’s unusual call as a honk-bark and estimate that there are only between 500 and 1,000 of them left, making it critically endangered. The Southern Highlands forests, where most highland mangabeys are believed to live, are being severely depleted by illegal logging.

Two teams working more than 230 miles (350km) apart stumbled on the new species almost simultaneously.

Biologists from WCS conducting research on the flanks of the 10,000ft volcano Mount Rungwe and in the adjoining Kitulo National Park were the first to stumble across the monkey. The scientific appellation now given to the species, Lophocebus kipunji, recognises its local Kinyakyusa name (pronounced kip-oon-jee) used by a few hunters around Mount Rungwe.

Some months later the same species was independently discovered in Ndundulu Forest Reserve in the Udzungwa Mountains, where Carolyn Ehardt, a primatologist from the University of Georgia, was running a conservation project on its relative, the critically endangered Sanje mangabey.

The monkey was identified as a new species by Dr Ehardt and Tom Butynski, the director of Conservation International’s Eastern Africa biodiversity hot-spots programme.

When Dr Ehardt and Tim Davenport, the head of the WCS Southern Highlands Conservation Programme, found out last October of their discoveries, the two teams joined forces to write up their experiences.

Russell A. Mittermeier, the President of Conservation International, said: “This exciting discovery demonstrates once again how little we know about our closest living relatives, the non-human primates.”

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