SINGAPORE - A stroll around campus for one student serendipitously led to an encounter with a silvered langur on Sept 5, marking the first reported sighting of the monkey here.

Prior to this, there have been no records of the species in Singapore, according to the National Parks Board (NParks).

Final-year National University of Singapore (NUS) student Tony Ng told The Straits Times that he was walking in Clementi Woods Park at about 4pm when noises that sounded like those made by wild boars piqued his interest.

To the 23-year-old’s surprise, the grunting sounds came from a monkey on a tree.

“At first, I thought it was a Raffles’ banded langur. When I searched on Google, I realised it looked nothing like it,” he said.

Singapore has two species of langur: The native Raffles’ banded langur and the dusky langur, which is naturally found in Peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand.

The medical student snapped a few photographs of the male silvered langur, which was alone. When he left half an hour later, the animal was still on the tree.

“It was just zoning out… I was confused because it didn’t look like anything I had seen before,” said Mr Ng.

Primatologist Andie Ang said the leaf-eating monkey belongs to one of two species of silvered langur, which get their name from their shimmering grey fur under the sun.

The langur could either be Trachypithecus selangorensis native to the forests of West Malaysia or Trachypithecus cristatus found in Sumatra, Batam, Bintan and Borneo, added the head of primate conservation and Singapore programmes at Mandai Nature, the conservation arm of Mandai Wildlife Group.

It is improbable that this langur is an escaped pet since the monkey is an adult male that appears to be healthy, said Dr Ang, who also chairs the Raffles...