It lives in the high canopy of Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marked by an orange-cream patch of fur around its mouth against a black face [1]. For the first time, it has a scientific name: Colobus congoensis, known to the people who live near it as 'likweli' [1].
The formal description, led by researchers at Yale and published in the journal PLOS ONE, makes it only the fifth new African monkey species named in seventy-five years [1]. Its known range is small - about 1,700 square kilometers, documented across 114 sightings between 2018 and 2022 - and it split from its nearest relative some five million years ago [1].
The scientists are not waiting to sound the alarm: they have proposed listing the likweli as Endangered from the start, so its protection can begin before its numbers are ever in question [1]. In a park most of the world has never heard of, there was a monkey no science had ever named [1].
