MONKEY BIDNESS.(The Talk of the Town)(monkeys)

Criticize if you like, but no way was it the monkey's fault. The monkey, who, given the option, would probably choose to remain nameless, was evidently content to perch in a palm tree near the Undumo River in northern Bolivia, twelve miles from the nearest settlement of Homo sapiens. A creature of steadfast habits, a monogamous fruit-eater capable of spending many hours a day hugging his/her mate while crooning a tune with unapologetically repetitive lyrics ("Lu-ca lu-ca lu-ca lu-ca"), the monkey generally maintained a very low profile. Along came Dr. Robert Wallace, a British primatologist and the Wildlife Conservation Society's main man in La Paz. This was five years ago. Over the next couple of years, he spotted the monkey (or, rather, monkeys) several more times. Wallace had other reasons to be in the bush--he was helping the Bolivian park service develop a management plan for Madidi National Park, a New Jersey-size expanse that has the distinction of being the most biologically diverse protected area in South America--but it was impossible not to be impressed by the monkey, a titi about sixteen inches tall. "It hangs around and sulks but is a very good-looking monkey," Wallace said the other day, when he came to town to conduct some monkey business in the offices of the Wildlife Conservation Society, at the Bronx Zoo. "It has a very strong orange coloration on its cheeks, neck, and chest, burgundy-colored feet. The body is light-brown tan. The tail has a white tip and is about forty or fifty centimetres long. The real clincher is its golden crown. When you catch it in the light, it's very striking."

Actually, the most striking thing about the monkey was that until Wallace focussed on it it didn't exist--not taxonomically, anyway. Titi monkeys are found only in South America, and there are twenty-eight officially recognized species. The monkey in Madidi would be the twenty-ninth. A forthcoming issue of the journal Neotropical Primates will include an article about the Madidi monkey co-authored by Wallace. Though the paper has already been peer-reviewed by primatologists who agree that a new species has been discovered, publication has been delayed until the monkey has a name. Wallace, a lean, well-mannered fellow in his late thirties, never considered naming it after himself; that sort of thing simply isn't done nowadays, unless, say, you happen to be a zoologist with Trump-like proclivities. Instead, he, his colleagues at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Bolivian park authorities decided to auction off the naming rights, with the proceeds being used to protect Madidi.

"To date in Madidi, we've ...