'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin

https://news.yale.edu/2026/07/15/meet-likweli-new-monkey-species-discovered-congo-basin

by gmays • 6 days ago

121 31 6 days ago

news.yale.edu

fsckboy• 6 days ago

I assume there are local people living in the jungle there? did the researchers ask them what they think? perhaps Likweli looks, well, like other monkeys around there, and in the pre-Darwin West people were probably not super clear about about small differences between species. I'm just curious, usually for monkeys there are some humans around who've been eating them.

this paragraph mentions it but doesn't clear much up:

Residents in only eight villages reported knowledge of the species and could accurately describe it. Since people in the region typically have detailed knowledge of local flora and fauna, this supports the notion that Likweli is a cryptic species, the researchers said.

Diogenesian• 6 days ago

Maybe you skipped over this in the beginning:

  The species, Colobus congoensis, is a rare and cryptic monkey largely unknown even among people living within its range. But those who are familiar with the small, black monkeys — an arboreal creature marked by distinctive orange-cream patches around their mouths and noses — call them “Likweli,” which the researchers recommend remain the species’ common name.

Otherwise I am a little confused what you're asking about.

Edit: also see the point that there is a very similar Colobus monkey more widely known by locals, but this is a distinct species known only to a few, and until 2018 was previously unknown even to local naturalists/explorers.

culi2• 6 days ago

Yeah the second paragraph explicitly says the name "likweli" is the local name for it.

A lot of people seem confused about what "new species of [insert terrestrial animal]" means in 2026. Maybe it's a science communication failure. It'd be more correct and less confusing if we use "scientifically described" instead of "discovered". Even 100 years ago, almost every newly described species was already known and often named by local indigenous groups.

I'm reminded of how astounded modern botanists are at the "folk taxonomy" of Cahuilla people for oak species. They have a word for every modern species. An astounding feat given how notoriously difficult Quercus species are to differentiate given their profuse tendency to hybridize

walrus01• 6 days ago

There is more detail here: https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/new-monkey-species-con...

"The newly identified primate is not only genetically and anatomically distinct from other African colobus monkeys but is further distinguished by its vocalizations. Its deep, resonant roaring calls resemble those of related Colobus species but possess a distinct acoustic structure.

Researchers also incorporated local ecological knowledge to better understand the species’ distribution and behavior, speaking with residents and hunters across villages in the Lomami National Park’s buffer zone. Only eight villages recognized the species or could accurately describe it. Local communities referred to the monkey as “Likweli” and “kasaba nkoni,” the latter meaning “the branch shaker,” and described it as elusive and rarely seen."

"Between 2018 and 2022, researchers recorded 114 sightings across an estimated range of just 1,700 square kilometers – an unusually small range for colobus monkeys. C. congoensis appears naturally isolated by rivers and forest barriers and dependent on scattered upland forest patches in the Congo Basin."

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My understanding of the local terrain and jungle there is that 'upland forest' is not well suited for manual labor type human agriculture, so there would be few if any villages directly in its habitat. And not frequent reasons for the people who live near it to go directly into its habitat, and even when they do, it's living high up in the tree canopy and may not be directly observed.

gregjw• 6 days ago

wake up babe new monkey just dropped

pfdietz• 6 days ago

The new species is an example of a "cryptic species": a species that is morphologically similar to another species but can be distinguished by DNA.

Cryptic species are astoundingly common. A recent paper estimates that each known vertebrate morphological species is, on average, actually two cryptic species.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2064/202...

astrobe_• 6 days ago

The "crypto" Greek root can mean "hidden" indeed [1].

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CF%85%CF%80%CF%8...

rickdangerous1• 6 days ago

The bigfoot folks will be talking about this for years.

Myrmornis5• 6 days ago

It's an allopatric population. It's one of the great embarrassments of biology. The question "is this population part of the same 'species' as this other population" is simply not defined in biology when they are allopatric. Look at your country's bird identification guide. If you're in Europe or N. America you'll find lots of "species" that are just allopatric populations accompanied by some mtDNA / sound recording data claiming they're "sufficiently" distinct.

It shouldn't be controversial to say that this is nonsense. The main problem is that it is challenging for conservation biology to admit that 'species' isn't well defined in allopatry. That is indeed unfortunate. But, science can't be politics.

Think about it: there's nothing about the laws of physics, chemistry, or fundamental biology that implies that all populations must be clearly assignable to distinct categories. What biology says is that sexual eukaryotic organisms exist and they breed and distribute themselves more of less connectedly over space, and, stuff happens over time. Whether or not you can interbreed in sympatry is profoundly important -- loss of interbreeding is the basis of biological diversity. And allopatry is profoundly important -- it's the main way you lose the ability to interbreed. But two allopatric populations are just that: the organisms don't interbreed because they can't; they're not in "cruising distance". You could take two groups of individuals of any population you like and ship them off to islands on the other side of the world and they won't interbreed. They were part of the same "species" before their trip so presumably they still are when they get to their new homes. But the question of "when in the future should we say that they've evolved apart enough for us to call them different 'species'" is a question about what's convenient or useful, not a question about biological concepts or mechanisms.

So it's not that studying the biology of allopatric populations isn't worthwhile -- far from it -- it's just that biology has a sentimental attachment to the idea that populations can always be assigned to "species". You can consider their ancestry as organismal pedigrees, and you can consider the ancestry of different parts of their genome, you can model it mathematically, you can collect genetic data and try to make inferences about it and about how the world they evolved in gave rise to it all. Population genetics, phylogeography, biogeography, phylogenetics etc are all extremely interesting and worthwhile. But with those subjects came confused "species concepts" stretching over decades trying to explain why some or other genealogical or phylogenetic criterion was the right basis to use to define the word "species".

But the correct thing to do was much simpler: just accept that there is no scientific reason for the question "are these allopatric populations the same thing or not" to have any particular meaning, let alone answer.

People who have written some sense among the decades of nonsense: Jürgen Haffer and and Ernst Mayr's geographical species, and Jody Hey's in his book "Genes, categories and species".

keiferski3• 6 days ago

It’s a debated issue, not a great embarrassment.

This article is a good guide to the topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/

Myrmornis5• 6 days ago

Thanks, I've looked at that before, but I don't think I've ever read it properly. Are you sure it's not missing the simple answer? Give up the idea that the question of whether populations are "conspecific" should be assigned a meaning.

Words are just labels we attach to concepts that we find ourselves wanting to refer to. My claim is that there is no concept in allopatry that's worth naming.

Have a look at Hey's underappreciated book (he's the first author cited in the article you linked).

It is an embarrassment: because there's a simple answer (the one I just gave), and because the confusion over "species concepts" has persisted for decades and confused generations of biologists, and hundreds, if not thousands of flawed papers have been published claiming "sufficient divergence" of allopatric populations.

anotherpaul2• 6 days ago

I agree that the species concept is a bit of a mess but how do you conclude that these two populations can still interbreed?

From the article I do not get the same suspicion. Even though they mention the "sister species" is 1200km removed this might be true while being a "finished" allopatric speciation.

From the paper:

"Our fossil calibrated mitochondrial clock analysis estimates the most recent common ancestor of C. congoensis and C. satanas existed ~4.27–5.78 Ma. In an additional analysis that used the same secondary calibration point as Roos and Zinner [36], we obtained younger divergence estimates by approximately 1 million years (3.44–4.73 Ma)."

Myrmornis5• 5 days ago

Hi, two answers:

Firstly,

how do you conclude that these two populations can still interbreed?

I'm saying that people shouldn't spend time asking that question of allopatric populations.

Secondly you're right that I didn't read up on these monkeys. I wanted to rant about species concepts, but I was doing it in a discussion about some doubtless wonderful and very interesting monkeys and I am definitely guilty of not doing justice to them or to the people studying them.

jl6• 6 days ago

A definition that is debatable at the edges doesn’t have to be debatable at the center, so I don’t think it follows that we need to completely throw out the concept. Nature doesn’t provide neat categories, but speciation is nonetheless a real natural phenomenon that isn’t perturbed by having fuzzy boundaries.

Myrmornis5• 5 days ago

Yes I completely agree with every word of this. I hope I didn't give the opposite impression. Clearly the sexual organisms living in one place belong to discrete groups, defined by what breeds with what, no objection to using the word species for those groups in sympatry, and the process by which those species come into existence is extremely important and worth studying (I used to do that). As you say, the problem is that the definition doesn't apply in all situations (e.g. populations that don't live in the same place).

That shouldn't be controversial, but unfortunately the idea that you can and should try to "determine" whether such populations are conspecific is completely entrenched in biology; has been since Linnaeus basically.

anotherpaul2• 6 days ago

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

The link to the paper

rustyhancock• 6 days ago

I wish they called it confirmed and not discovered

It was known about by the locals, they even gave it a name, it's call was very well known even if few had sighted it.

They did important scientific work to confirm a distinct species. But they did not discover it unless you discount the local people!

markdown• 6 days ago

Incredible that that language is still used in 2026.

https://www.audubon.org/news/like-finding-unicorn-researcher...

This article about finding a bird presumed to be extinct for 140yrs is a good example of the local people knowing the bird was there all along, and guiding researchers with cameras to spots where they could find them.

BTW the youtube video on that page of the team in utter jubilation upon seeing the photos in their cameras never fails to make me smile.

BobaFloutist• 5 days ago

I mean it's used by editors in headlines, but the article itself says "has described a new Colobus monkey species," and goes on to discuss the locals (relative un)familiarity with the species.

dash2• 6 days ago

I mean did the locals think of the two species as separate? If not then the discovery of a separate species is what’s important, not the knowledge of the physical population. Or was the population previously unknown to researchers?

brokegrammer• 6 days ago

They look very similar to Kalisks

talktalkmake• 5 days ago

OOO! Chimpanzee-that! Monkey News.

zomglings• 4 days ago

God I miss that show.

penguin_booze• 5 days ago

I can't imagine anything worse that could happen to an animal than getting discovered by humans. Dear monkey, please run, and run far!

RetroTechie• 5 days ago

Dear monkey, please run, and run far!

Where to? Article says they're in a national park already (and even there, hunted sometimes).

'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin

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