Miss Waldron's Red Colobus

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Miss Waldron's Red Colobus[1]

Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Cercopithecidae
Genus: Piliocolobus
Species: P. badius
Subspecies: P. b. waldronae
Trinomial name
Piliocolobus badius waldronae
(Hayman, 1936)

Miss Waldron's Red Colobus (Piliocolobus badius waldronae) is a subspecies of the Western Red Colobus native to West Africa. It has not been officially sighted since 1978 and was declared extinct in 2000. However, new evidence suggests that a very small number of these monkeys may be living in the southeast corner of Ivory Coast. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists Miss Waldron's Red Colobus as "Critically Endangered."

Contents

[edit] Name

Miss Waldron's Red Colobus was discovered in December 1933 by Willoughby P. Lowe, a British Museum collector who had shot eight specimens of the animal. Lowe named it after a fellow museum employee, Miss F. Waldron, who may have been his field assistant.

[edit] Physical characteristics

Black fur covers the majority of Miss Waldron's Red Colobus, but a distinctive pattern of bright red fur can be found on its forehead and thighs. An Old World monkey, it grows to a height of about 3 feet (1 meter), with a head that is small for its frame. No photograph of a living Miss Waldron's Red Colobus is known to exist.

[edit] Behavior

Miss Waldron's Red Colobus lives in large family groups of 20 or more. They are social and highly vocal animals, frequently communicating with each other via loud calls, shrieks and chattering. Their strategy for safety is based on having many eyes and ears.

Fruit, seeds and foliage provide the primary food source of Miss Waldron's Red Colobus.

[edit] Habitat

High-canopy forests (rainforests) in Ghana and near the Ivory Coast served as the exclusive habitat of Miss Waldron's Red Colobus.

[edit] Extinction

Miss Waldron's Red Colobus is the first primate to be declared extinct in the 21st century. It was frequently (and illegally) poached for bushmeat, with little interference by local governments. Habitat destruction also played a role. The Common Chimpanzee frequently hunts the Western Red Colobus, which may have contributed to this subspecies' decline.

There is considerable debate in recent years over whether Miss Waldron's Red Colobus is truly extinct. A series of forest surveys, conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society from 1993–1999, failed to uncover any evidence of the monkey's existence, and the animal was declared extinct a year later.

However, primatologist W. Scott McGraw from Ohio State University has been collecting evidence of the monkey's continued existence during his expeditions to Ivory Coast over the past several years.

  • In 2000, McGraw was given a black monkey tail which DNA tests proved to be from a red colobus. The hunter who gave McGraw the tail claimed he had shot the monkey the previous year.
  • In 2001, an Ivorian hunter gave McGraw a piece of reddish monkey skin believed to be from Miss Waldron's Red Colobus.
  • That same year, McGraw received from an associate in Africa a photograph of what appeared to be an adult Miss Waldron's Red Colobus which had been killed. Experts who have examined the photograph attest to its likely authenticity.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Groves, Colin (16 November 2005). in Wilson, D. E., and Reeder, D. M. (eds): Mammal Species of the World, 3rd edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 169. ISBN 0-801-88221-4. 
  2. ^ Butynski, T. & Members of the Primate Specialist Group (2000). Procolobus badius ssp. waldronae. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 2006-07-12.
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