A species of monkey previously unknown to science has been discovered in Africa: and boffins say that it has an "extensive" bright blue bottom which rivals that of the largest and most colourful known monkeys on Earth. Children will very probably already know that zebras have stripes, and giraffes a sort of square pattern, but will they have heard of a spectacled bear? The monkey finds a paint box and brush and when all the animals are sleeping he paints them with stripes on the zebra, spots on the leopard and squares on the giraffe! A few years ago I was main illustrator for Longman's 'Story Street' reading scheme, illustrating 79 titles and writing 5.

As he walks, taking in the drab colors of all the other animals around him, monkey comes upon a paintbox and brushes. They know that they need to teach the cheeky monkey a lesson – but what part of his body do you think they will paint? Some primatologists speculate that this primate’s blue bottom is also valuable for attracting mates.In un tempo molto lontano, una scimmia annoiata trova per fatalità un set di colori e decide di colorare gli animali grigi della foresta (non mi spiego perché la scimmia sia allora marrone. Soprattutto dopo che ho avuto modo di testarlo: quando l'ho letto alla classe dei più piccoli (a 3/5 anni hanno una soglia molto bassa di attenzione) erano interessatissimi! The blue perineum, buttocks and scrotum displayed by adult males are comparable in size and coloration in C lomamiensis and C hamlyni, and are more extensive than genital patches in any other Cercopithecus. And if we’re finding new species of primates, then who knows how many new species of small mammals or lizards or insects, just to name a few, might be out there. When the mischievous monkey discovers a paintbox, he has a brilliant idea, but things don’t go quite as Monkey has planned .

Steve is the author of Smelly Peter the Great Pea Eater (Winner of the Sheffield Children's Book Award 2009) and The Lamb Who Came for Dinner (Shortlisted for the Red House Children's Book Award and read by Meatloaf on CITV's Bookaboo). So the bear grabs the paintbrush, and the box of colours, and proceeds to paint the bum cheeks of the cheeky monkey “as bright as a blue summer sky” (that’ll teach him!He starts small, with some stripy snakes and bright green frogs, but soon he’s painting black stripes on zebras and big brown squares on giraffes. In the battle between blue butt monkeys vs red butt monkeys, the Celebes crested macaque must be by far the ugliest. This was a totally unexpected find, and we knew we had something unusual and possibly unknown when we first saw the animal.

It has a pink face, golden throat, massive whiskers and a vertical white stripe up its nose, which gives it some resemblance to the already well known owl-faced monkey. The Rhesus Macaque, also known as the red bottom monkey, is a species of Old World monkey native to Asia. I can guarantee that they will giggle whenever they hear the word “bum” or see the monkey’s bright blue bottom. Extremely complete boffinry detail on the lesula - including highly detailed but perhaps rather off-putting pics of the possibly record-breaking azure buttock area, which as a mainstream publication we have chosen not to republish - can be seen here for free courtesy of online scientific journal PLoS ONE.This is an engagingly cheeky picture book, which will make young children laugh out loud, as soon as they spot the cover. Though the international scientific community was unaware of its existence until 2007, the local population was aware of its presence for some time.