Miller’s Grizzled Langur Rediscovered: Researchers Find Extinct Monkey in Indonesia

Many believed that the Miller’s Grizzled Langur has been extinct for years, but scientists working in Indonesia of rediscovered the rare gray monkey.

The team was setting up camera traps in the hopes of capturing images of leopards and organgutans, but they ended up making a dramatic discovery. The Miller’s Grizzled Langur is not extinct.

The Huffington Post reports that the only images of the Miller’s Grizzled Langur before this new discovery were museum sketches. Brent Loken, a Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in Canada, said:

“We were all pretty ecstatic, the fact that, wow, this monkey still lives.”

Despite the Miller’s Grizzled Langur’s rediscovery, the team is still skeptical about its future. Loken added:

“For me the discovery of this monkey is representative of so many species in Indonesia. There are so many animals we know so little about and their home ranges are disappearing so quickly. It feels like a lot of these animals are going to quickly enter extinction.”

This rare monkey was listed as one of the 25 most endangered primates and many believed that it was extinct. The Ethical Expeditions research team is now trying to collect data on the Miller’s Grizzled Langur to find out just how many are still in existence.

The research team captured more than 4,000 images of the rare monkey over the course of a two-month period last summer. Their findings were published American Journal of Primatology on Friday.

Here’s a video from Ethical Expeditions.