Only 200 mature individuals left: Guizhou's unique golden snub-nosed monkey is critically endangered

Although the outrageous conversation above may just be because Calendar Lady hasn't woken up yet...but the appearance of the Guizhou golden monkey is indeed much more vague than that of the Sichuan golden monkey and the Yunnan golden monkey.

Guizhou golden monkey, photographed in Fanjingshan Nature Reserve, Guizhou｜Niu Kefeng / primatewatching.com

Since it was discovered in the early 20th century, the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey has been looming in the misty mountains of Guizhou, full of mystery. On July 21 this year, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) updated the species red list, upgrading the status of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey from endangered to critically endangered, with an estimated number of mature individuals at only 200. However, even though their situation has repeatedly raised red flags, humans still have very limited understanding of them.

Snub-nosed monkey with only back view

In the early 20th century, Englishman Henry Breary obtained a monkey skin from a hunter in the Fanjing Mountain area of ​​Guizhou. The skin was mainly gray, with some golden and white areas , and was obviously not from the common macaque. Breary realized that this might be a species that had not yet been described by the scientific community, so he sent the skin to the Natural History Museum in the UK.

In 1903, British zoologist Thomas Oldford named the species to which the fur belonged as Rhinopithecus brelichi, which is what we know today as the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey . Based on just a piece of fur, he could only briefly describe the appearance of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey, and the journal article he published only had an imaginary picture of its back.

In the paper published in 1903, there was only an imaginary picture of the back of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey｜Joseph Smit

Since then, researchers have never had the opportunity to obtain specimens of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey, nor can they confirm whether the species still exists . In the mid-1960s, during a field survey in Fanjing Mountain, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found a skull of a Guizhou snub-nosed monkey, but they were unable to see a living individual. After all, the mountainous area where the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey lives is very steep, and 80% of the days each year are shrouded in fog. Even today, when there are fixed field survey points and the range of monkey activity is known, researchers cannot see monkeys every day, let alone decades ago.

It wasn’t until 1967 that locals who had been in contact with the researchers finally sent a message that they had captured a monkey with a unique appearance. This was the first time that the scientific community had seen a living Guizhou snub-nosed monkey , 63 years after the species was named.

The Guizhou snub-nosed monkey belongs to the genus Snub-nosed Monkey, and the name comes from its nostrils that point upward. The Snub-nosed Monkey genus has five members, of which the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey, the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, and the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey are all endemic to China , and the other two members are the Vietnamese snub-nosed monkey and the Nujiang snub-nosed monkey. Although they are all called golden snub-nosed monkeys, only the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey is actually covered in golden hair. Although the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey also has golden hair on its shoulders, upper arms, and head, the rest of its body is gray. The bright white hair under the back of its neck and its long and thick tail are very eye-catching, so it is also called the white-shouldered snub-nosed monkey or the cow-tailed monkey.

Scroll to view the other four members of the genus Snub-nosed Monkey, from top to bottom:

Sichuan golden monkey R. roxellana｜pelican / Wikimedia Commons

Yunnan golden monkey R. bieti｜Walnut seedlings

Vietnamese golden monkey R. avunculus｜Quyet Le / Wikimedia Commons

Nujiang golden monkey R. strykeri｜Clara dos Santos Turcinski / Wikimedia Commons

First revealed, can't be kept

The female Guizhou snub-nosed monkey that was captured in 1967 was brought back to Beijing by Guo Quanqiang and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and kept in the office building of the Institute of Zoology . However, keeping it was not smooth, after all, no one had observed Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys in the wild, and no one knew what to feed them in cages. At first, people fed her rice, pasta and fruit based on past experience in raising monkeys, but it didn't take long for the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey to start bloating, hiccups and indigestion .

We now know that leaves account for a high proportion of the diet of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey. In seasons when fruits and seeds are abundant, they will change their taste and eat fruits and seeds, but leaves still account for at least 20% of their diet.

The stomach of colobus monkeys is adapted to a fiber-rich diet and is divided into 3 or 4 chambers, with the extra chamber called Praesaccus｜doi.org/10.1002/jmor.21052

In fact, golden snub-nosed monkeys, like white-headed langurs and black langurs, which belong to the same subfamily of colobinae, eat a lot of high-fiber foods such as leaves in the wild. Their stomachs are adapted to this fiber-rich diet, and are somewhat similar to those of cattle and sheep. They are divided into three or four chambers, relying on microorganisms in the stomach to ferment food and obtain nutrition from indigestible cellulose . Rice, noodles, and artificial feed blocks, which are easily digestible and lack fiber, will cause abnormal microbial fermentation, leading to a variety of digestive system diseases. This is also the reason why zoos discourage visitors from feeding animals - the snacks that humans love can only cause them pain. Golden snub-nosed monkeys, like proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) and red-legged white-rumped langurs (Pygathrix nemaeus), have four-chambered stomachs. Their digestive tracts have a larger capacity and are more susceptible to these diseases in artificial breeding environments.

Proboscis monkeys also have four-chambered stomachs and are prone to gastrointestinal problems in captivity. | David Dennis / Flickr

To this day, it is still difficult to raise these species, and scientists are still studying their digestive physiology and digestive microorganisms in order to help breeding institutions find a more suitable diet. It was even more difficult for researchers 60 years ago to raise the Guizhou golden monkey. They later sought experience from the Beijing Zoo, which had raised Sichuan golden monkeys, and added more leaves to the diet in time. A year later, the Guizhou golden monkey was received by the Beijing Zoo and continued to be raised.

Unfortunately, she died in 1969 , and the Guizhou golden monkey disappeared into the mist again.

Drag the family, gather and separate

After that, although some individuals were occasionally captured, it was not until the mid-1970s that researchers finally confirmed the whereabouts of wild populations of Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys. At that time, Xie Jiahua and his colleagues from Guizhou Normal University found wild populations of monkeys in a broad-leaved forest at an altitude of about 1,800 meters in Fanjing Mountain, allowing them to conduct more in-depth research. Much of what we know about Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys today comes from their research in collaboration with the New York Zoological Society in the United States. These works not only confirmed where Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys are and what they like to eat, but also outlined the outline of their social life.

A polygynous family unit of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey | References [10]

Like other snub-nosed monkeys, Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys live in a hierarchical society . They can form large groups of more than 100 members, and some large groups may even have more than 400 members. Large groups contain multiple family units and at least one all-male unit - the former consists of a male monkey, several female monkeys and their offspring, and the latter only contains single male monkeys. Young male monkeys will leave their family units before they reach sexual maturity at the age of 3 to 4 years old, join all-male units, or even go to other large groups of all-male units to continue growing and looking for opportunities to obtain their own family units.

The large group is not inseparable, and sometimes it will split into several small groups, acting alone for weeks or even months. The reasons for the group's splitting and aggregation are still unclear, and mating and food resources are possible factors.

Struggling to survive in a narrow habitat

Although research since the 1970s has provided the most basic information about the Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkey, it has also brought worrying news - in several field surveys, the estimated number of Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkeys was less than 1,000.

Hunting by humans was once a major threat to the population of Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, but hunting has been gradually curbed since the establishment of the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve in 1986. Although poachers' wire traps for other animals still occasionally injure Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, few people target them anymore.

Guizhou golden monkey living in the forest | Ministry of Natural Resources

Now, the main threats they face are small and fragmented habitats and the impact of human activities . The Fanjingshan Nature Reserve, with an area of ​​about 419 square kilometers, is the only home of the Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys we know of. In the eyes of the monkeys, the real home may be even smaller.

The Guizhou snub-nosed monkey prefers to stay in broad-leaved forests between 1,400 and 2,100 meters above sea level. According to field surveys and measurements in 2014, only 69.6 square kilometers of the reserve meet this condition - what's worse, 28.5 square kilometers of it are located in the southern part of the reserve, where no traces of Guizhou snub-nosed monkey activities have been found. On the one hand, the suitable habitat is not continuous, and there is no suitable passage to help the monkeys move to the southern forest; on the other hand, the highway and cableway run through the reserve, and for the Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, who are afraid of noise, it is impossible to approach or cross the horizontal ditch.

Guizhou golden monkey in the zoo｜Giant Eland

Surveys at the beginning of this century showed that the number of Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys was about 800, which was basically the same as the situation in the 1980s. But just a few years later, field observations conducted from 2012 to 2014 only found a large group . According to habitat conditions and density estimates of Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, there are only 125 to 336 monkeys alive now . This year, IUCN also adjusted the estimated number of Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys to this range and adjusted the rating to critically endangered.

Saving the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey is not completely hopeless. On the one hand, the artificial breeding program of the Fanjingshan Nature Reserve is still ongoing, and three monkeys have been successfully bred since 2018; on the other hand, if tourist activities in the northern part of the reserve can be reduced, and afforestation can be carried out to reconnect the fragmented mid-altitude broad-leaved forests there , it is still possible to provide the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey with a safe home. However, both aspects will require years of efforts before they can eventually benefit the wild population. Before that, the reproduction rate of only one litter every three years and the low genetic diversity put the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey at great risk. In the foreseeable future, they will still have to struggle on the brink of extinction.

Guizhou Golden Monkey｜Cyril C. Grueter

We are all familiar with the name "golden monkey", but we often overlook the fact that their situation is not optimistic.

The Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey , which has the largest number, has more than 10,000 individuals, but the total number is still declining due to factors such as habitat shrinkage; the Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkey is the only one of the five golden snub-nosed monkeys whose number has been steadily increasing, but there are still only more than 3,000 individuals, and global warming may also shrink their potential habitat area; the number of adult Vietnamese golden snub -nosed monkeys is only 80 to 100; the Nujiang golden snub-nosed monkey was only named by the scientific community in 2010, and is even less studied than the Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkey, with a number of only 400. The latter two, like the Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkey, are in a critically endangered state and live in areas with high mountains and dense forests, making it difficult to carry out research work, and limited information has further limited public attention to them.

The situation of golden snub-nosed monkeys is not optimistic | Reference [13]

Perhaps before we truly understand the Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkey, these monkeys with unique appearance will completely disappear into the fog, leaving only a blurry silhouette. But our attention and actions may still be in time for the Guizhou golden snub-nosed monkey to survive in danger like the Hainan gibbon, giving us a chance to see their faces clearly.

References

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[2] CCTV Records. (2020, May 16). Searching for Guizhou Golden Monkeys. https://tv.cctv.com/2012/12/15/VIDA1355569727595353.shtml

[3] Guo, Y., Ren, B., Dai, D., Zhou, Z., Garber, PA, & Zhou, J. (2020). Habitat estimates reveal that there are fewer than 400 Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, Rhinopithecus brelichi, remaining in the wild. Global Ecology and Conservation, 24, e01181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01181

[4] Hale, VL, Tan, CL, Niu, K., Yang, Y., Zhang, Q., Knight, R., & Amato, KR (2019). Gut microbiota in wild and captive Guizhou snub-nosed monkeys, Rhinopithecus brelichi. American Journal of Primatology, 81(10–11), e22989. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22989

[5] Kirkpatrick, RC (1995). The natural history and conservation of the snub-nosed monkeys (genus Rhinopithecus). Biological Conservation, 72(3), 363–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-3207(94)00039-S

[6] Kirkpatrick, RC, & Grueter, CC (2010). Snub-nosed monkeys: Multilevel societies across varied environments. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 19(3), 98–113. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20259

[7] Matsuda, I., Chapman, CA, & Clauss, M. (2019). Colobine forestomach anatomy and diet. Journal of Morphology, 280(11), 1608–1616. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmor.21052

[8] Thomas, O. (1903). On a new Chinese monkey. Processes Zoological Society of London, 1, 224–226.

[9] Xiang, Z.-F., Liang, W.-B., Nie, S.-G., & Li, M. (2012). Diet and feeding behavior of Rhinopithecus brelichi at Yangaoping, Guizhou. American Journal of Primatology, 74(6), 551–560. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22008

[10] Xiang, Z.-F., Nie, S.-G., Lei, X.-P., Chang, Z.-F., Wei, F.-W., & Li, M. (2009). Current status and conservation of the gray snub-nosed monkey Rhinopithecus brelichi (Colobinae) in Guizhou, China. Biological Conservation, 142(3), 469–476. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.11.019

[11] Zhou, J., Ren, B., Garber, P., Long, Y., & Li, B. (2022, March 27). IUCN red list of threatened species: Rhinopithecus brelichi. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. https://www.iucnredlist.org/en

[12] Quan Guoqiang, & Xie Jiahua. (1981). Data of the Guizhou subspecies of the Guanzi snub-nosed monkey Rhinopithecus roxellanae brelichi Thomas. Acta Theriologica Sinica, 1(2), 113–116.

[13] Xiang Zuofu. (2020). Research progress on social ecology of golden snub-nosed monkeys. Life Sciences, 32(7), 692–703. https://doi.org/10.13376/j.cbls/2020087

Author: Walnut seedlings

Editor: Mai Mai

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