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Cotton-top tamarins are Animals of the Month

By Heather Graves
Correspondent


SUAMICO – Named for the plume of white fluff on top of their heads, this month’s Animal of the Month is the cotton-top tamarin.

“If they feel threatened they can raise their hair up to make themselves look bigger and scarier,” said Shannon Scanlan, zookeeper at the NEW Zoo.

Weighing in at just 600 to 650 grams (roughly the size of a large squirrel) cotton-top tamarins are one of the most endangered primates in the world – losing their homes in northwestern Colombia to extensive deforestation.

“Their habitat is disappearing,” Scanlan said. “Three-quarters of their original habitat has been clear-cut. And in the 1960s and the early 1970s, 20,000-30,000 cotton-top tamarins were captured and exported to the United States for biomedical research. By 1973, they were on the endangered species list. They are also popular in the illegal pet trade. So that is something else they have stacked against them.”

Cotton-top tamarins are critically endangered with less than 6,000 remaining.

The NEW Zoo has been doing its part in protecting the population for more than a decade.

Resident cotton-top tamarins Bonnie and Clyde were the proud parents of six, all born at the NEW Zoo and all part of the Species Survival Plan (SSP) through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Bonnie and Clyde have since passed away.

Cotton-top tamarins commonly give birth to twins, with the whole family caring for the infants.

“Typically, cotton-top tamarins are multi-generational, so the parents and then generations of siblings live together,” Scanlan said. “But they will also have outsiders that come in and they will also have members that will go out. So it’s not exclusively family.”

Bonnie and Clyde had three sets of twins – Huevos (male) and Azucar (female) who are nine years old; Poncho and Dillinger (both male) who are eight; and Cassidy (female) and Floyd (male) who are five. Floyd has since transferred to another zoo.

Cotton-top tamarins have a specific reproduction hierarchy, with only the dominant pair allowed to breed.

“The dominant female actually suppresses the other females in the troop from breeding with her pheromones,” Scanlan said.

The child-rearing, however, is shared by all in the troop. This is known as cooperative breeding.

“How it started here is we just had a male and a female – and then Bonnie had her babies, so that hierarchy was already in place,” Scanlan said. “The siblings participated in raising their younger siblings, and that’s a very important role that they have.”

These duties include carrying, protecting, feeding and comforting the breeding pair’s young.

It will depend on the observations of zookeepers and the SSP, to decide when and if the five cotton-top tamarins at the NEW Zoo will breed.

One of the most unique characteristics of cotton-top tamarins, aside from the obvious hairdo, is how they communicate.

The tiny primates have 38 different distinct sounds they use, often heard softly chirping like birds.

The cotton-top tamarins can been seen in two exhibits in the Riley Building in the Northern Trails part of the NEW Zoo.

The exhibits are connected, which Scanlan said can come in handy sometimes.

“They can have conflict,” she said. “If they are having conflicts, the exhibit gives us the option to separate them, yet they can still see each other and hear each other.”

In the wild, cotton-top tamarins live on a diet of plants, fruits, insects and tree sap and have been seen eating small amphibians and reptiles.

Scanlan said the tamarin’s personalities and slight facial differences help zookeepers tell them apart.

“Huevos, the older male, has some bumps on his face,” she said. “Dillinger is always very sweet and sits right next to me. I’m sure they think that we all look similar, too.”

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