Alice Joan
A rare and endangered black lion tamarin has recently been born at a Jersey Zoo
Less than 2,000 black lion tamarins currently live in the wild, so this birth warranted a celebration from the zoo.
There are less than 2,000 black lion tamarins in the wild. Grace, pictured here, was too weak to hold onto her mother when born at the Jersey Zoo.
.The zoo celebrated the rare monkey’s birth on Twitter, explaining that the youngster, named Grace, was too weak to hold onto her mother, so staff stepped in and hand-reared the infant.”
The newborn, named Grace, was too weak to hold onto her mother, so staff at the zoo stepped in to hand-rear her.
“Thanks to the incredible efforts of the keepers, she (Grace) is now back with her family and thriving,” the zoo said.
Here’s the video the zoo shared on its Twitter account announcing the birth:
Black lion tamarins are essentially pint-sized monkeys with a mane similar to a lion, hence the name.
Tamarins are found in South America, and the black lion tamarins can only be found in a small area in the southern Brazillian forest.
This isolated region is inside the Morro do Diabo State Park in São Paulo, Brazil.
The endangered species was thought to be extinct for almost 50 years until 1972 when they were discovered again.
Jersey zoo specializes in the conservation of rare and endangered species. In fact, they were the first to breed a black lion tamarin successfully back in 1990.
In the video shared on the zoo’s Twitter account, Dom Wormell, the Head OF Mammals at the zoo explained that Grace could:
“have 10-12 infants in her lifetime, which will go a long way to bolstering this captive breeding program for black lion tamarins.”
“We need to build that captive population so that hopefully, we can restore populations in the wild,” he said.