Long considered sacred, the golden langur, found in western Assam, is now an endangered animal

Being confined to the sal-dominated (Shorea robusta) tropical moist deciduous and semi-evergreen forests in India, and the sub-tropical and temperate broad-leaved forests in the India – Bhutan landscape, the golden langur stands out as the most restricted colobine (leaf-eating primate) species in India. Although described by earlier naturalists such as RB Pemberton and CM Inglis and co-workers during the 19th century as “cream colored monkey” and “Sankosh cream langurs”, the credit for suggesting that it could be a new species goes to EP Gee, a British tea planter and conservationist living in Assam. It was formally described in 1956 by H Khajuria of the Zoological Survey of India and named Presbytis geei in honour of Gee.

The golden langur is a medium-sized primate. Males weigh 10-12 kg and females 9.5-10 kg. They are less sexually dimorphic than other colobines such as grey langurs (Semnopithecus spp). Based on phylogeny and biogeography, T Wangchuk, a Bhutanese biologist, opined that Trachypithecus geei and T pileatus (capped langurs) branched off from an ancestral Trachypithecus from South Asia. In addition, the Sankosh River and Pele La mountain system in central Bhutan isolated a population of capped langurs during a warming period in central Bhutan, and this population later specialised into the morphologically distinct golden langur.

In India,...

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