Kipunji Discovery

It was during interviews with hunters in early 2003 in villages around Mt Rungwe, that the WCS team first heard rumours about a shy monkey known as Kipunji. Tim Davenport and Noah Mpunga assumed at first that this was the Sykes monkey or one of the many spirit animals that are so much a part of Wanyakyusa culture. However, along with Sophy Machaga and Daniela De Luca, they began to investigate further, both in the villages at the foot of the mountains, and in the forest above. Finally, they first saw an unusual monkey in May 2003, but because of the terrain, thick secondary forest and the animal's highly cryptic nature, subsequent sightings were infrequent and poor. It was not until December 2003, during work in the contiguous Livingstone Forest (now part of the new Kitulo National Park), that the team clearly observed the monkey at closer quarters, and Davenport recognized it as a new species of monkey.

Some months later in July 2004, the same species was also found in Ndundulu Forest in the Udzungwa Mountains by research biologists Trevor Jones and Richard Laizzer, while working on a research project for the University of Georgia's Dr Carolyn Ehardt. The project was part-funded by a grant from the WCS Research Fellowship Program. Jones was joined in Ndundulu by Ehardt and Conservation International (CI)'s Dr Tom Butynski and they recognised that the monkey was an undescribed species. The two separate teams learned of each other's work in October 2004 and joined forces to write a description for the journal Science.

The monkey was originally classified as a type of managabey, a medium sized primate found in the forests of Africa. However,  a recent worldwide collaboration between conservation biologists and scientists from WCS, the Field Museum, Yale University and the University of Alaska Museum, has revealed that the rare monkey is in fact so unique, it warrants the creation of a new genus, Rungwecebus (rung-way-cee-bus). This exciting new discovery is based on molecular and morphological analysis of a deceased monkey found in a farmers trap, as well as direct observations from the field. These new findings, published in the May 11th issue of Science, mark the first new genus discovered in over 83 years.

There is still much to discover about this rare primate and WCS conservationists in Tanzania are working to better understand the monkey, its habitat, and the threats it faces. While studies are ongoing, it is suspectected that the Kipunji will be designated as "critically endangered" for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. "The scientific community has been waiting for eight decades for this to happen, " said Dr. Tim Davenport of WCS, "now we must move fast to protect it."