I Fed Endangered Woolly Monkeys in Ecuador

I welcome back to Taronga TV and with Suzy she's a keeper here at the Turanga institute of science and learning says talk us through these beautiful creatures yes I hate them we're in one of our immersive classrooms this is that rainforest room we have three habitats so we have woodlands arid and then the rainforest well it really feels like it right now let's just do it right here these beautiful creatures obviously not Australian but can you talk us through what who they are so we have four cotton-top tamarins here in this exhibit and there are a little bachelor group so they're all boys and they're from South America so specifically from the northwest corner of Columbia they are so beautiful why is this a bachelor group yeah so these guys are brothers four brothers we've got a twin so introduce you we've got um I've got PD and JD who's just up the back there yeah and one and tricky and tricky here is the the dominant male yeah and they live really cohesively as an all-male group and they will often do this in the wild when they're sort of in between you know moving through different family groups okay you know I'm not sure he can hear everyone I'll try get a little bit closer with my microphone and see if we hear a couple of little vocalizations is there eating at the moment all I can hear is chewing all I can hear is chewing as well yeah that sounds like a little bird food isn't that incredible yeah so they have a very complicated language they actually have 38 different vocalizations they have their own grammar so by varying the pitch and the length of those high-pitched trills or calls they can have very very complex conversations with each other like grammar proper grammar but grandma yes I could probably do it a little bit of tamarind teaching from them they are just incredible and what are they even the wild yes oh they eat a whole range in the world lots of different fruits they eat invertebrates different insects just like these mirror works they also eat seeds and they can eat quite large seeds and they act as seed dispersers in the wild so they you know they help the ecosystem by fertilizing the ground and by dispersing those seeds as well so you might have heard that in school kids if you're watching see disperses there's lots of different ways isn't there says animals do it winning does it water does it loads of different ways and these are a seed dispersal that's very cool now talk us through their beautiful markings and their their tail and everything yeah so they're very unique little monkey they sort of look like a little punk rocker I think people often liken them to little Albert Einstein's they're very cute but yeah you'll see though they have that beautiful long tail these guys are a new world monkey from South America and their tail isn't prehensile so it means they can't grab like a spider monkey for example but they use it for balance you'll see as they move along the black brush they'll move it from side to side to make sure if they can maintain their balance on the vines and on the branches absolutely spectacular and everybody watching if you want to come and try out one of the immersive classrooms talk to your teachers and see if they can book a room because that's what you do that uses you go on when school's come back you can come back in here and have this incredible experience where you've got these beautiful creatures all around you know there's some birds in here as well Sue's nicob are pigeons correct yes what else have we got yes we have the Nicobar pigeons we also have bleeding-heart pigeons and they're more ground-dwelling bird and we have two tortoises that live in here as well beautiful he was really tall he min can you hear that everyone so we've got another breeding group down in that beautiful fig tree opposite the meerkats can you talk us through what's going on there yes so we have a family group down there there's actually seven that live on that beautiful fig tree we have obviously the Mum and Dad the breeding pair and then we have all of their offspring and we literally just had a new set of twins born back in March and they are called Santiago and Matteo fantastic how big would they be just to show people like teeny tiny the body is probably about that that big when they're born and then they have their tail yeah but yeah they're just gorgeous when they're born it's so beautiful they are just fantastic so what's the status in the wild says they are critically endangered so their numbers quite low unfortunately in the 70s they were poached for medical research numbers haven't quite recovered and that's because they've only got about 5% left of their habitat the forests in the rainforests in Northwest Colombia have obviously been cleared for agriculture and farming and urbanization and so they haven't got the habitat to build those numbers back up mm-hmm thanks so much for having us it's really fantastic to be here you never know what's around the next 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