Rolling Hills Zoo welcomes a couple of new arrivals.
The zoo announced Friday afternoon the birth of twin baby cotton-top tamarins. The two healthy babies were born Wednesday morning.
The newborns are the third set of twins for Lilly, a four-year-old female and Eddy, who is eight years old.
The cotton-top tamarin is a small New World monkey (weighing less than one pound) that is found in the wild in tropical forest edges and secondary forests of northwest Colombia in South America, where it is arboreal and diurnal.
This tamarin species has a long sagittal crest – white hairs from forehead to nape flowing over the shoulders, giving it the name “Cotton-top”. The skin of the face is black, with gray or white bands above the eyes that continue along the edge of the face down to the jaw and has no facial hair. Its lower canine teeth are longer than its incisors, giving the appearance of small tusks. About the size of a squirrel, males are only slightly larger than females.
Having lost more than three-quarters of their original habitat to deforestation, cotton-top tamarins are critically endangered. Only 2,000 to 3,000 individuals exist in the wild. The species is considered to be one of “The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates.”
Eddy licks one of the new babies. (Rolling Hills Zoo photo)
