Madagascar’s silky sifaka is a prime candidate to claim the unenviable distinction of becoming the first primate to go extinct in two centuries. The sifaka (pictured) is one of 25 primate species identified by a new report as being most at risk. It found that almost one-third of all primate species are in danger of disappearing for good.
The last primate known to have gone extinct was Xenothrix mcgregori – a species similar to the capuchin monkey – which disappeared from Jamaica in the early 1700s. Its mantle may not pass straight to the sifaka, however, as there ware a handful of even rarer species. The golden-headed langur of Vietnam and China’s Hainan gibbon each number in the dozens, while the Horton Plains slender loris of Sri Lanka has been sighted just four times since 1937. The rarest of them all is thought to be Miss Waldron’s red colobus