Pink, full, perfectly defined lips. Bluish skin on the face and a nose so flat it almost does not exist. If you saw this face without context, you would swear someone had been through the operating room.
But Rhinopithecus bieti, known as the black snub-nosed langur, has never touched a scalpel. It lives in the conifer forests of Yunnan and Tibet, China, between 3.000 and 4.500 meters above sea level, in groups that can number up to 300 individuals and survive the extreme cold by eating almost nothing but lichens.
That face that looks retouched is actually the result of millions of years of evolution in Asia’s highest mountains. And today, the very nature that made it so distinctive is disappearing: habitat loss has made it one of the planet’s most threatened primates.
