NEW HOMINID APE - BUT IT’S IN PERIL

Extraordinary as it may seem, a new species of hominid primate has been discovered in North Sumatra. I went to Sumatra many years ago and I suppose it is not all that surprising that the dense tropical forests there concealed another species of orangutan, especially as it has been known for some time that there was a population of this great ape that scientists had not been able to compare with others of its genus. Anyway, after being able to study a skeleton, forensic examination has revealed that it is a new species, now named as Pongo tapanuliensis Nurcahyo, Meijaard, Nowak, Fredriksson & Groves, 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan. This means there are now seven known great apes, if you exclude humans, the other six being the Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, the chimpanzee, the bonobo and the eastern and western gorillas.

There are thought to be fewer than 800 individuals of the Tapanuli orangutan, making them highly endangered, the most threatened of all the great apes in fact.  Local people hunt them for meat in the Batang Toru forests where they live, and yet another destructive dam project, like those that have flooded tropical forest habitat elsewhere in the world, is planned for the region where they live, plus threats from mining and deforestation generally. This is a simultaneously exciting and depressing story, as are so many in nature conservation and biodiversity today.