Golden Lion Tamarins give birth to twins

The pair of Golden lion tamarins formed last year at the zoo recently gave birth to twins. The parents are 3 and 4 years of age and are taking very good care of their offspring who are thriving.

As in other species of tamarins and marmosets, the entire family cooperates to raise the youngsters: just after the birth, the mother is helped by the other members of the group to transport or groom the babies. The male often carries the youngsters while the female takes them back for nursing.

Golden lion tamarins get their name from their bright golden-orange fur and are omnivorous feeding on a wide variety of fruits, nectar, gum, insects and small vertebrates. At the zoo they eat fruits and vegetables as well as mealworms, crickets, meat and hard-boiled eggs.

Living only in the Rio State in Brazil, this endemic species almost completely disappeared from the wild in the 1960s due to the destruction of the Atlantic Rainforest. Reintroductions of captive-born animals (among which 3 individuals born at La Palmyre) carried out between the mid-80s and the beginning of the 2000s followed by translocations made the species recover from extinction. Yet it remains threatened by urbanization and in particular the expansion of road network that fragments remaining forests blocks, by the risk of hybridization with introduced Golden-headed lion tamarins and diseases such as the yellow fever a recent outbreak of which led to a significant decline in populations living in some protected areas.