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Scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia “rediscovered” a monkey so rare that I thought was extinct .
The scientists were even more surprised to have found the gray langur Miller in a remote area of habitat previously registered.
The team installed cameras in the woods Wehe, at the eastern end of the island of Borneo, in June, with hopes of capturing images of longibandos leopards, orangutans and other species that congregate in a number of known mineral deposits.
Generated images of surprised everyone: groups of monkeys that nobody had seen before.
As there were virtually no pictures of the langurs of Miller, was initially difficult to confirm his suspicions, said Brent Loken, a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, and one of the leading scientists in the group.
The only existing images were pictures in museums. “We are ecstatic by the fact that this monkey is still alive, and also in Wehe is,” said Loken.
The monkey, whose nose and lips pink and white fur around the school, once roamed the northeastern part of Borneo, as well as the islands of Sumatra and Java and the Malay Peninsula. But there were fears that for years was extinct.
The forests that were their habitat had been destroyed by forest fires and human activity, and an extensive study in 2005 found no evidence of specimens.
“For me, the discovery of this monkey is representative of many species in Indonesia,” said Loken on the phone.
“There are so many animals that we know so little and whose habitats are disappearing so quickly,” he said.
“You feel that many of these animals will fall into extinction.” The next step is to return to the forest of 38 000 hectares to try to determine how many grizzled langur could be there, according to a team of local and foreign scientists, who published their findings Friday at the American Journal of Primatology.
The monkeys appear and more than 4 000 images taken over a period of two months, but may be one or two families returning to the same place.
lae
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