A pair of White-eared Titis. Not the newly discovered species, but they are cuter, so I used a photo of them instead.

A scientist first glimpsed Callicebus caquetensis—a type of titi monkey—in the 1960s. But political strife in the southern Caquetá Province kept scientists away until 2008, when an expedition finally confirmed the bearded monkey as a new species.

The cat-size primate is “fascinating” because it mates for life, an unusual trait among monkeys, said expedition leader Thomas Defler, a primatologist at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Pairs are often spotted sitting on branches with their tails intertwined.

The Caquetá titi has, somewhat unoriginally, been named for the Colombian province it was discovered in. Back in 2004, another newly discovered monkey species got a much more interesting name — the GoldenPalace.com Titi, Callicebus aureipalatii. The naming rights to C. aureipalatii were auctioned off, with the funds going to a non-profit organization. You can probably guess who the winner of that auction was.

-Susan