Meet the likweli, a newly identified monkey that roars with its creamy orange mouth

Likwelis have a reputation for being shy little monkeys who scurry up into the tree canopy whenever humans approach.

But the first time Junior Amboko came across them in the Congolese rainforest, they seemed ready to be beheld. 

“I’m in front of these guys, and we kept staring [at] each other. They saw where I was, and they couldn’t look away,” Amboko, a PhD student at Florida Atlantic University, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.

“I kept, like, taking pictures and pictures and pictures. And they’re like, ‘OK, do your stuff, take your pictures. We are here for you.'”

Amboko has co-authored a new study identifying the elusive creatures as a new species. The findings were published in the journal PLOS One this week.

‘It’s a big deal’

The monkeys, which scientists have called Colobus congoensis, make their home in Lomami National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. 

While they may be new to science, the researchers say they’re known to some residents of nearby villages, who call them likwelis. 

But even local knowledge is limited. The researcher surveyed 52 communities bordering the monkeys’ known range, but only found residents in eight locations who knew about the monkeys and could describe them.

“It’s amazing that we’re still finding new primate species,” University of Toronto primatologist Laura Bolt, who was not involved in the discovery, said in an email. 

“Despite our many technological advances, there’s still so much we don’t know about the world around us.”

They’re the second new species of monkey to be identified in the park since 2012, and researchers wonder if there may yet be more unknown primates to be found. 

“It’s a big beacon going off on the maps that this is the place to really look and discover and protect for biodiversity,” co-author Kate Detwiler said. “So, it’s a big deal.”

It all started with a blurry photograph

Researchers with the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation first came across a likweli in 2008, but were only able to capture a blurry photograph.

“Unfortunately this picture couldn’t tell us a lot about, in terms of details, what we’re looking at,” said Amboko, who joined Lukuru in 2014.

It would be another decade before Lukuru researchers captured new, much clearer, photographs of the monkeys.

This time, Amboko says, they could see the monkeys have dark black fur, white patches on their tails, and a distinctive “orange cream pigmentation” on their lips.

“We could tell … we were looking at something that is kind of unusual,” Amboko said.

The researchers spent the next few years scouring the park for more of these orange-mouthed monkeys. Between 2018 and 2022, they spotted them 114 times over a range of 1,700 square kilometres.

Despite Amboko’s lucky first encounter, he says the likwelis are generally shy animals, and will climb high into the trees, out of sight, to evade perception. 

That’s likely how they remained undetected to researchers, and even most locals, for so long. 

Distinctive sounds, and an unusual smell

But it turns out there are other ways to find likwelis. One is to listen. 

“When they haven’t spotted you yet, they usually make a sound. We call this a roar,” Amboko said.

Scientists have recorded six instances of these roars. Amboko suspects this is their way of “signalling their territory” to other groups of likwelis.

WATCH | Hear a liweli make its distinctive call:

Meet Likweli, a newly identified species of monkey with orange lips

Researchers have identified a new species of monkey in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Called Colobus congoensis, it is commonly known as Likweli by local communities. Credit: Daniel Rosengren, Frankfurt Zoological Society/Bernard Bonanga

If you can’t see them or hear them, you could always try taking a whiff. 

Amboko says likwelis have a very strong, unusual and very distinctive odour. He says he can’t think of anything to compare it to.

“If we put you in a room and we say, OK, you have the sense of how the room smells, and we bring the likweli, you’ll definitely notice that,” he said. 

But aside from having documented their scent, sounds and sun-kissed lips, there are still a lot of things scientists don’t know about likwelis. 

How many are there? What do they eat? When do they mate? And perhaps most interestingly, where are their babies?

“We’ve never come across the baby likweli,” Amboko said. “This has been a puzzle for us. Like, what is happening? Because all other monkeys around, we will see their babies … clinging. But the likweli? Not yet.”

Amboko plans to do his dissertation on the likweli, and is determined to begin unravelling their mysteries. 

“If we have 1,000 steps for the likweli journey, this was the first one, which was to describe the species,” he said. “Now that we know, we still have to study the behaviour.”