The Hatinh langur is a highly threatened Old World monkey

Old World monkey

The Old World monkeys or Cercopithecidae are a group of primates, falling in the superfamily Cercopithecoidea in the clade Catarrhini. The Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, inhabiting a range of environments from tropical rain forest to savanna, shrubland and mountainous...

 found in limestone forests in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, primarily in the Quang Binh Province

Quang Binh Province

Quảng Bình , formerly Tiên Bình under the reign of Le Trung Hung of the Lê Dynasty, this province was renamed Quảng Bình in 1604) is a province in the North Central Coast of Vietnam....

. A recent survey discovered a small population living in the Quang Tri Province

Quang Tri Province

Quảng Trị is a province on the North Central Coast of Vietnam, north of the former imperial capital of Huế.-Geography:Located in North Central Vietnam, Quang Tri Province is surrounded by Quang Binh Province on the north, Thua Thien-Hue Province on the south, Savannakhet Province of Laos on the...

. Contrary to its name, it is not known from the Ha Tinh Province. The local Van Kieu minority refer to this lutung

Lutung

The lutungs are a group of Old World monkeys and make up the entirety of the genus Trachypithecus. Their range is split into two parts; one part is much of southeast Asia , the other part is extreme southern India and Sri Lanka. The greater part of India has lutungs...

 as the 'Con Cung', which roughly translates as "black, cliff-dwelling monkey with a long tail". It resembles the closely related Francois' langur

Francois' Langur

Francois' langur or Francois' leaf monkey is a species of lutung and the type species of its species group. Francois' langur belongs to the Colobinae subfamily, Cercopithecidae family, in the Primates order...

 (T. francoisi), but its white cheek-stripes extend behind the ears onto the nape.

This diurnal, largely arboreal langur is social and typically seen in groups of 2-15, but occasionally groups may number as many as 30 individuals. It has often been considered a subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 of the Francois' langur, but was elevated to a full species by Bradon-Jones in 1995, and this was followed by Groves

Colin Groves

Colin Peter Groves is Professor of Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.Born in England on 24 June 1942, Colin Groves completed a Bachelor of Science at University College London in 1963, and a Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal Free Hospital School of...

, 2005. Both, however, listed it as a subspecies in 2004, and genetic

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

 work suggest it should be considered a subspecies of the Laotian langur

Laotian Langur

The Laotian langur or white-browed black langur is a species of primate in the Cercopithecidae family. It is endemic to Laos. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry forests...

(T. laotum).