Monkey Business

The Baton Rouge Zoo’s efforts to save the golden lion tamarin

by

One of the best parts about working for a magazine is the field trips—if you keep an eye out for a good press release, you can have all kinds of adventures, which is how I got to go to the Baton Rouge Zoo for work. The press release in question announced the recent birth of baby golden lion tamarins, a kind of small monkey native to southeastern Brazil. Now, an animal lover will go see a baby anything, but not only are these critters cute, they’re also seriously endangered. I wanted to know more about how having these animals bred here in Baton Rouge fit into the plan to keep them scampering around the trees for future generations. (I also wanted to be paid to go to the zoo.)

Golden lion tamarins are little—a lot of wild animals are described as “about the size of a housecat,” but the golden lion tamarin doesn’t even reach that milestone: hunched over in the trees, they looked like they might each fit into a coconut. (They are one of four species of lion tamarin, which are cousins to but not the same as the mere tamarins.) They are about as golden as can be, with long, glossy, strawberry blond fur, and have the wise little faces that make most monkeys look so unnervingly human—a few different rolls of the evolutionary dice, and we would never have made it out of the trees to gawp at our cousins who stayed. 

The babies, about eight weeks old when I visited, spent most of their time clinging to their parents’ fur, but were starting to make little exploratory ventures through the branches and trees in their habitat. They were both endearingly clumsy in the general way of baby animals and far, far more agile than most human beings, with their every little hop bringing them closer to fulfilling the destiny of becoming natural gymnasts they share with all tree-dwelling mammals. I fell immediately in love, of course.

As I watched the lion tamarins play, along with the equally entertaining spectacle of the photographer trying to get an angle on the monkeys through the chain link of the enclosure, General Curator Sam Winslow filled me in on their situation. Like many animals of the Amazon, they’ve been pinched by the expansion of human activity. The Amazon, even after generations of depredation, is still so vast that it’s hard to realize that many of the species who call it home have relatively small ranges within that vast biosphere. The golden lion tamarins’ home range is in the southeast of Brazil, long-settled, heavily developed, and home to ranches and cities alike. The unrelenting pressure from human expansion, combined with poaching for the illegal pet trade (they are cute) meant that by the 1970s, there were only about 200 specimens surviving in the wild. This is a critical point; the exact number varies by animal, but below a certain number of individuals, it can become difficult for an animal’s numbers to rebound, due to a phenomenon called inbreeding depression. Low genetic diversity means they develop the equivalents of the lantern jaws, runny blood, and hit-or-miss fertility that wiped out the niece-marrying royal families of Europe.

The tamarin was saved by human beings in two ways. The first, which is marginally less inspiring than the other, is that it became fashionable among ranchers to leave a little undeveloped land on their property for “prestige” wild animals like golden lion tamarins to be seen in. The second was through a captive breeding program, in which lion tamarins bred in zoos were introduced to the wild. Since this species forms monogamous pairs, the captive-bred monkeys would be placed near where a wild specimen of the opposite sex had been spotted; the two could meet through a “howdy gate,” a mesh section of a pen or enclosure that allows for interaction but maintains a barrier in case the animals experience their equivalent of a bad date (tell me you’ve never wished you’d had one of these). If all goes well, the captive-bred lion tamarin is released to make new lion tamarins, with some success: estimates are that of the now approximately 3200 individuals in the wild, a third are these released zoo-bred specimens or their descendants. 

The babies at the Baton Rouge Zoo won’t be going to Brazil, but will instead be matched with other specimens through the international studbook, which, despite the name, is legal to send through the mail. One of these exists for every species with a zoo-based conservation plan, listing every captive individual and their relation to others. Again, this is to prevent inbreeding, and to ensure the survival of a healthy zoo population in case the wild numbers ever need further support. This won’t happen for a while, though; golden lion tamarins learn parental care from their parents, so these guys will stick around to watch the next generation of babies before being sent off to find love.

[You might like: Animal Rescue: Terrie Varnado.]

After tearing myself away from the animals, I asked Zoo Director Phil Frost about the zoo’s role in conservation overall. One straightforward but worth-noting point is simply that zoos let people experience the sight of rare, unusual, or exotic animals beyond what they would get to otherwise. A Himalayan trek or an African safari may be out of reach, but if you can go across town and see these amazing, fascinating, awe-inspiring animals—you’ll care. If you’ve seen a rhino or a giraffe or a golden lion tamarin, you’re more likely to want them to remain in the world. And if you care about these animals remaining in the world, you’re more likely to give to see that goal come to pass. Conservation programs take money, and if people are inspired to give, the zoo can see that the money is well spent. While, as a taxpayer-funded entity, the zoo cannot spend money from its own budget on conservation abroad, what it can and does do is manage a foundation that makes sure zoo-goer and patron donations do the most good possible. 

One particularly interesting example comes from Namibia, a desert country in southwest Africa that’s home to a cheetah population. Local goatherds have had problems with cheetahs preying on their stock; this is bad for the cheetahs because the goatherds may be forced to kill them, if it comes down to the goats feeding their family or the cheetahs, and because goats aren’t really a challenge to catch—the cheetahs are becoming “out of shape” with this easy prey. A new program offers Anatolians, enormous herding dogs, to the goatherds. The cheetahs shy away from the big dogs, as well they might, and go hunt the plentiful gazelles they evolved to hunt. The goatherds’ families get to eat and to play with a dog, and the cheetahs remain wild and safe away from human populations. Creative solutions like this that take the needs of local human populations into account are seeing amazing successes with vulnerable animal populations all over the world—and zoo-going Baton Rouge animal lovers are part of the solution. Our local zoo is helping to keep some of nature’s most glorious creations from all too literally going the way of the dodo. That’s something to be proud of—and, as if you needed another one, a good reason to go to the zoo. 

BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo

3601 Thomas Road

Baton Rouge, La.

(225) 775-3877