The Myanmar snub nosed monkey A British wildlife photographer has managed to capture the first known picture of the extremely rare snub-nosed monkey of Burma. The creatures, whose faces resemble skulls, are so rare that they have only ever been seen once before by Western eyes, when the team did not have time to record the meeting.
More commonly, dead bodies, skins and bones are all that is seen of them, usually after they have been hunted by villagers.
The monkey gets its name from its peculiar turned-up nose, which causes problems for it when it rains - for all the water runs up its nostrils.
As a result it constantly sneezes during the monsoon season and in order to avoid the rain keeps its face to the ground as much as possible.
Locals even call it mey nwoah (monkey with an upturned face).
But now Jeremy Holden, who works with Britain\'s oldest conservation organisation, Fauna and Flora International, has photographed a pair of them looking upwards in colour.
He also spotted them with their young in the remote mountain jungles of Kachin, on the border of Burma and China.
\'It\'s the first time the monkey has been photographed,\' said a proud Mr Holden,
He said his expectations had not been high as he set out from his base in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the elusive monkey.
\'We were dealing with very tough conditions in a remote and rugged area that contained perhaps fewer than 200 monkeys,\' he said today.
\'We didn\'t know where they lived and I didn\'t hold out much hope of short-term success with this work.\'
But then a small group of monkeys walked past the hidden cameras that he had set up to shoot pictures at any sign of movement. What excited the scientists was the discovery that some of the females were carrying babies.
Mr Holden worked with scientists linked to the Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association and another group called the People Resources and Conservation Fundation.
\'As yet, no scientist has seen a live individual,\' said Mr Frank Momberg of Fauna and Flora International.
Mr Ngwe Lin, a Burmese scientist who was with a team that first identified the monkey as a possible new species, said the photos were the the first record of the snub-nosed monkey in its natural habitat.
\'It is great to finally have photographs because they show us something about how and where it actually lives,\' he said.
Mr Holden originally travelled from the UK to Sumatra, Indonesia, as a photographer in 1994 but it was an encounter with the mysterious Orang Pendek, an ape with a Yeti-like reputation, that changed his life.
His enthusiasm for seeking the world\'s elusive animals grew - and now, with the \'capture\' of the snub-nosed monkey on camera has come one of his greatest rewards.