Jersey Zoo welcomes endangered black-faced tamarins

An endangered black-faced tamarin has been born at Jersey Zoo in England.

There are less than 2,000 tamarins in the world today. Grace, the monkey pictured above, was too weak to hug her mother when she was born at the Jersey Zoo.

In late March, the Jersey Zoo celebrated the birth of the rare monkey on Twitter. They explained that the baby monkey's name was Grace and that it was too weak to hold its mother. Therefore, the staff at the zoo gave their best support to take care of the newborn monkey.

The zoo said: 'Thanks to the incredible efforts of its keepers, it was able to reunite with its family and thrive.

Black-faced macaques are considerably smaller in appearance than the 'cat' species they are named after. The small monkeys weigh only 0.5 to 1 kg as an adult. They get this name also because of their lion-like mane.

The endangered status of the tamarin makes the birth of a tamarind black-faced macaque at the Jersey Zoo all the more important.

Tamarins are a family of small primates found in South America. The tamarin is an endangered species found only in a small area of ​​the jungle in southern Brazil, according to the Durrell Wildlife Foundation, which runs the zoo.

It is known that the majority of the wild black-faced lion macaque population lives in an isolated area inside Morro do Diabo State Park in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The species was thought to have been extinct for nearly 50 years until they were rediscovered in 1972. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the monkeys as "endangered", estimating that only the monkeys remain. About 1,600 are left in the wild due to deforestation and logging.

They are also sometimes referred to as golden tamarins due to their recognizable yellow coat.

The Jersey Zoo, which specializes in rare and endangered species, first successfully bred tamarins in captivity in 1990, according to their website. Since then, the zoo has released a number of captive monkeys into the wild in Brazil.

In a video posted to the zoo's Twitter page, the zoo's Head of Mammals, Dom Wormell, explains that for a female monkey like Grace, she can "have 10 to 12 babies." in life, this will help propel the captive program for this black-faced macaque over a long period of time."

"We need to build populations in captivity to hopefully restore populations in the wild," he added.