Golden lion tamarin

Scientific name: Leontopithecus rosalia

Country: Brazil

Continent: South America

Diet: Fruits - frugivore, insects - insectivore, sap - gumivore, small lizards and vertebrates.

Food & feeding: Omnivore

Habitats: Tropical rainforest

Conservation status: Endangered

Relatives: Golden-headed lion tamarin, Goeldi's monkey

Description: The Golden-headed lion tamarin is a small, squirrel-sized monkey, about 20-26 cm long with a 35 cm tail and long golden lion-like mane. It is covered in long silky golden fur. The face, hands and feet remain bare. The feet have sharp claws (most other primates have nails) that are useful for gripping and climbing branches and also for grabbing their insect meals.

Lifestyle: During the day the Golden-headed lion tamarins roam their territory looking for food. Their diet consists of sweet fruits, insects and small lizards. Their long slender fingers are very useful for probing into the cracks in the bark where they often find their food. They will also feed on the forest floor, rummaging through the leaf-litter in search or insects. As evening falls, the tamarins return to their nest, usually a hole in a hollow tree or a tangle of vines.

Family & friends: They live in small family groups of about 4 or 5 animals, consisting of a breeding pair and their youngest offspring. The young will stay with their parents after they are weaned and will help their parents raise the newest young. The parents have a strong pair-bond and will stay with each other for life.

Keeping in touch: Their territory boundaries are marked using scent glands located on the chest and genital areas. Like other tamarins, they produce a range of calls ticks, clucks and whines that are used to communicate with other group members and from time to time with neighbouring groups. Aggressive signals include an arched back and prolonged stares. The adult's brightly coloured fur is probably also a way of demonstrating their health and vigour to their partner and the rest of the group.

Growing up: The dominant female will give birth to one or two infants after a gestation period of about 130 days. The young are usually born between September and March, the warmest and wettest time of the year. They are born fully furred and with their eyes open, although dependent on their family for another 3 to 5 months. All members of the group will help to carry infants, with the adult male commonly doing the largest share. Infant care by young animals is not only helpful to the mother, but enables the young animals to practice parenting skills. Those animals, which have had such infant experience, make much better parents, an important consideration when pairing animals in the captive breeding programme.

Tamarins were thought by some people to be carriers of human diseases such as yellow fever and malaria, and were killed for this reason. By contrast, they were also kept by others as laboratory animals and even exotic pets.

Conservation news: These tamarins are one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with less than 1000 surviving in the wild, mostly in a small patch of rainforests known as Reserva Biologica de Poyo das Antas, near Rio de Janiero. Ninety percent of their original forest habitat has been cut down. Numbers in the wild have increased from a low of 400 in the 1970's. WWF is currently working to increase the protected area of forest available to these animals, and zoos are reintroducing captive-bred tamarins to the wild. Since 1984 147 tamarins have been released into the wild. It is hoped by 2025 there may be 2000 wild golden lion tamarins. Bristol Zoo Gardens are an important part of the captive breeding programme for this species.