The golden lion tamarin is a monkey small enough to hold, crowned with a backswept golden mane like a miniature lion's.Source 1
Families of two to eight sleep from dusk to sunrise in tree holes, tucked together for warmth.Source 1
Mothers usually bear twins — rare among primates — and the adult male does the largest share of the carrying.Source 1
Its Atlantic Forest home has been cut to two percent of its original area, scattered into islands of green.Source 2
By the 1960s, fewer than two hundred remained.Source 2
So zoos rebuilt the species: between 1984 and 2001, 146 tamarins born in 43 institutions on three continents went home to Brazil.Source 3
It worked. About a third of wild golden lion tamarins today descend from animals raised in human care.Source 1
The forest is being resewn too: restored pastures, corridor plantings, and a forested overpass that carries tamarins across a highway.Source 4Source 5
When yellow fever killed a third of the species, conservationists answered by vaccinating wild monkeys — over five hundred so far.Source 6Source 4
To witness the golden lion tamarin is to see what patience across generations can rebuild: roughly 4,800 now leap through the canopy.Source 4
