A new monkey species has been found in the rain forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
John Hart, the director for the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation based in Kinshasa, said to Our Amazing Planet, "When I first saw it, I immediately knew it was something new and different - I just didn't know how significant it was."
Finding the new species of monkey was an accident. Hart saw the monkey in 2007 when looking through his photographs from a field expedition. The image was taken in a village and was of a young girl named Georgette with the monkey.
The monkey with a blond mane and upper chest has a bright red patch on its lower back which Hart had never seen before. Five years later full of field work, anatomical study and genetic research Hart and othe researchers formally introduced the new monkey species called Cercopithecus lomamiensis, locally known as the lesula.
The team announced their findings in the online journal, PLOS One. The monkey that had taken a liking to Georgette had been brought to the area by her uncle who found the monkey on a hunting trip.
With Hart's further investigation he found out that the monkey lives in a dense rain forest that is around 6,500 square miles.
"We never expected to find a new species there but the Lomami basin is a very large block that has had very little exploration by biologists." Hart said to CNN.
The reason the monkey had gone unnoticed for so long is because the region where the monkey lives in the DRC is extremely remote.
The monkeys live in the isolated region in groups of up to five and eat fruit and leafy plants. A male monkey weighs up to 15 pounds which is double the size of their female counterparts.
The monkeys also have bright blue bottoms. Hart said to Our Amazing Planet . "Bright aquamarine buttocks and testicles. What a signal! That aquamarine blue is really a bright color in forest understory."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
