Dusky Langurs. Why the orange babies?
A Dusky Langur mother with her orange baby The Lutongs (lutungs), langurs or leaf monkeys are a group of Old World monkeys in the genus Trachypithecus . The name 'Lutung' from the Sundanese language means 'blackness'; and is the preferred name for members of this genus. DNA genetic analysis indicates that the ancestors of the modern species of lutung first differentiated from one another a little over 3 million years ago, during the late Pliocene, The various species alive today then diverged during the Pleistocene, presumably driven by habitat changes during ice ages. There are 20 species in the genus Trachypithecus today, listed below. The current lutung species, although living in different habitats have a number of similar habits and traits. One of these is that they mostly have orange coloured babies. This suggests that the genes encoding orange fur in infants is an ancestral gene(s) that has been maintained because it gives each species a survival advantage in t...