Four young female southern patas monkeys in an acacia tree in the Serengeti. Photo: Yvonne A. de Jong & Thomas M Butynski, Wildsolutions.nl
The southern patas monkey, thought to be on the brink of extinction, was sighted again in May. Primatologists Yvonne de Jong and Tom Butynski even captured the first moving images ever recorded of this species in the western Serengeti.
In the Serengeti of East Africa, the critically endangered southern patas monkey (Erythrocebus baumstarki) has been spotted once more. ‘We found a group of fourteen individuals and were able to record the first moving images of this species’, Dutch primatologist Yvonne de Jong of WildSolutions wrote by email on 23 May, clearly delighted. The species appears on the World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates list and likely numbers no more than one to two hundred individuals (see also interview ‘Ik ben een veldonderzoeker, geen activist’, Bionieuws 12, 2024).
E. baumstarki is related to the more widespread patas monkey (E. patas), which inhabits northern savannas from Senegal to Kenya. The range of the southern species contracted by around 85 per cent during the twentieth century and now covers roughly two thousand square kilometres (American Journal of Primatology, 2021). It was driven to local extinction in Kenya around 2015 and in the Kilimanjaro region around 2011, but has managed to persist in the western Serengeti of Tanzania. Degradation, loss and fragmentation of open savanna and acacia grasslands are the principal threats, whilst growing numbers of people, livestock and dogs make it almost impossible for this shy monkey to access drinking water. Patas monkeys owe their name to their drooping moustaches and colourful appearance, which apparently called to mind the Hungarian cavalrymen who once rode into battle. The genus name Erythrocebus refers to the orange-red colouring of the top of the head, back and tail: from the Greek eruthrós and kêbos, meaning ‘red’ and ‘monkey’. The species epithet honours the German colonial officer Paul Baumstark, who donated a skull and pelt of the species to the Berlin Museum in the early 1900s. ‘Now that the southern patas monkey has been rediscovered, we must do everything in our power to save this critically endangered species from extinction’, De Jong urges. ‘It simply cannot be that this becomes the next monkey species to go extinct in Africa – in the iconic Serengeti, of all places.’
A southern patas monkey in an acacia tree in the Serengeti. Photo: Yvonne A. de Jong & Thomas M Butynski, Wildsolutions.nl