New monkeys found in Brazil in Amazon

28 December 1997

The Associated Press 

NOVA ARIPUANA, (AP) - For more than a year, Marc van Roosmalen combed the Amazon rain
forest in search of a specific new species of monkey. He found more than he bargained for. 

Along the trail, the Dutch primatologist discovered four other previously unknown types of monkey
and a new species of porcupine. The formal description of two of the monkeys will appear in a
Brazilian scientific journal next year.

He also spotted a new tapir and new jaguar, although he has yet to capture them. 

Oh yes, he also found the monkey he was looking for. 

Scientists are excited by the discoveries, remarkable even by Brazilian standards. With 80 of the
world's 250 known monkey species - more than any other country - Brazil has turned up an average
of one new monkey a year since 1990. 

``From what Marc has shown me, they are certainly different than anything I've seen before,'' said
Anthony Rylands, a British professor of vertebrate zoology at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais. 

Even more startling, the new species were found barely 190 miles from Manaus, the Amazon's
largest city, which in turn is 1,800 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro. 

``That just goes to show how little we still know about biodiversity in the Amazon,'' Rylands said. 

It all started with the dwarf marmoset that appeared on Roosmalen's doorstep in 1996, brought by a
local man who knew that the scientist cares for orphaned monkeys. 

Roosmalen knew right away it was a new species, and the discovery was widely reported last
August. But finding the monkey's home was no easy task - all he knew was that it had come aboard
a boat somewhere along the 2,000-mile Madeira River. 

So Roosmalen set out through the forest, snapshot in hand, asking anybody he came across if they
had seen the monkey in the photograph. 

``I'd show people the picture and they'd say they knew where to find it. But what they showed me
always turned out to be another monkey,'' said Roosmalen, who works at the National Amazon
Research Institute, INPA, in Manaus. 

Occasionally, the ``wrong'' monkey also was an unknown species, one of the categories - family,
genus and species - used to classify animals. 

One of the new monkeys belongs to the Callthrix genus. Roosmalen has dubbed it the manicore
marmoset until the scientific description with a formal name is published. 

The squirrel-sized manicore has a grayish-white body with naked ears, orange legs, a black tail and
pinkish face. An average adult measures 9 inches with a 15-inch tail and weighs around 12 ounces. 

Another is a member of the Callicebus genus. The locals call it the zog-zog - probably from the
sound of the throaty duet couples sing to establish their territory. 

The zog-zog has a reddish-orange beard and belly, a grayish-brown back and a white spot on the
tip of its tail. An average adult measures 16 inches, has a tail slightly longer than its body and weighs
just over 2.2 pounds. 

Another discovery was a pink-nosed, black-tailed dwarf porcupine, with deceptively fluffy pale hair
covering sharp yellow spines. Roosmalen expects to publish the scientific description of the
porcupine next year with Maria Nazare da Silva, a small-mammal specialist at INPA. 

Still to come are descriptions of two more monkey species, the tapir and the jaguar. 

Roosmalen's search for his dwarf marmoset ended in Damiao Lisboa Pereira's backyard, in a tiny
community on the Aripuana River near its confluence with the Madeira. 

The monkeys come to Pereira's backyard three times a day to feed on a pair of morototo trees, one
of their few sources of food during the dry season. 

Not long after sunrise, zog-zogs call to each other deep in the thick jungle. High above, a pair of
Nun birds - long-tailed and black with bright red beaks - sing a somber duet resembling an organ
fugue. 

Then the monkeys appear, leaping from tree to tree with incredible speed and agility. 

``They move so easily it's like watching water flow,'' Roosmalen said. ``I think, relative to their size,
they are the fastest monkeys in the world.'' 

Roosmalen believes the adult monkey, which averages about 6 inches in length and weighs around
6.3 ounces, is the world's second smallest after the pygmy marmoset. 

It also has one of the world's smallest distributions for a primate. The species is found only on a
triangular patch of land smaller than Rhode Island between the Madeira and Aripuana rivers. 

The dozens of rivers that criss-cross the region are natural barriers that tend to isolate the species.
Monkeys that may share a common ancestor developed into separate species over several million
years. 

``On the other side of the Aripuana, the monkey is white with tuft ears. On this side, it's
whitish-orange with a black tail. The next river over, it's all white with a black tail and legs,'' explains
Valquimar Araujo, a boatman who has worked with Roosmalen for years. 

Unfortunately, the wealth of plants and animals here may disappear before science discovers them.
Without protection, most of these animals will be gone within 20 years, Roosmalen says. 

``I really believe the area has the highest biodiversity in the world in terms of primates and maybe in
general. But not a single hectare of the region is protected by law,'' he says. 

New roads and improved navigation along the Madeira River are part of a massive grain project
planned nearby and almost certainly will open the area to logging. 

The forest behind Pereira's house already bears the scars of selective logging. Huge tire tracks run a
mile into the once-pristine forest, where a bulldozer was used to remove the trees. 

The loggers received the community's permission to cut for a fee, then left without paying. 

AP-NY-12-28-97 1202EST