Golden lion tamarin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Golden lion tamarin |
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| A male golden lion tamarin at the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark. | |
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| A female golden lion tamarin at the Bronx Zoo in New York, United States. | |
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| Genus: |
Leontopithecus
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| Species: |
rosalia
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The golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia; Portuguese: mico-leão-dourado), also called the golden marmoset, is a small monkey from the Americas. It is known for its bright, reddish-orange fur. This special monkey lives only in the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil. Sadly, the golden lion tamarin is an endangered species, meaning it is at risk of disappearing forever.
Today, about 3,200 golden lion tamarins live in the wild in southeastern Brazil. Another 490 live safely in zoos around the world.
Contents
Physical Characteristics
The golden lion tamarin gets its name from its bright, reddish-orange fur. It also has long hair around its face and ears, which looks like a lion's mane. Its face is dark and has no hair. Interestingly, the bright orange color of their fur does not come from carotenoids, which are common natural orange colors.
The golden lion tamarin is the largest of the tamarins. It usually grows to about 26 centimeters (10 inches) long. It weighs around 620 grams (1.4 pounds), which is about the same as a small pineapple. Males and females are almost the same size. Like all tamarins, it has claw-like nails instead of flat nails. These claws help them cling to the sides of tree trunks. They can also move on all fours along small branches, like squirrels. They walk, run, leap, and bound through the trees.
Habitat and Distribution
The golden lion tamarin lives in a very small area. Over time, they have lost almost all of their original home in the Brazilian rainforest. Now, these tamarins are found in only three small areas of tropical rainforest in southeastern Brazil. These areas are the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, the Fazenda União Biological Reserve, and some private lands.
In 1972, scientists thought there were only about 400 to 500 golden lion tamarins left. By 1981, this number dropped to less than 200. But thanks to conservation efforts, their population has grown to about 3,200 in the wild today. These tamarins live in coastal lowland forests that are less than 300 meters (984 feet) above sea level. They can be found in forests on hilltops and in swampy areas.
Behavior and Ecology
Golden lion tamarins are active for up to 12 hours each day. They use a different sleeping spot every night. By moving their sleeping nests often, they leave less scent behind. This makes it harder for predators to find them. Their day usually starts with traveling and eating fruits. As the afternoon comes, they look for insects. By late afternoon, they move to their night dens.
Tamarin groups sleep in hollow tree holes, thick vines, or plants called epiphytes. They prefer sleeping spots that are about 11 to 15 meters (36 to 49 feet) off the ground. Golden lion tamarins tend to wake up earlier and go to bed later when the weather is warmer and wetter because the days are longer. When it's drier, they spend more time looking for insects because food is harder to find.
Golden lion tamarins are very good at finding food. They use their long fingers to search under tree bark and in plants like bromeliads. They have large territories, averaging 123 hectares (about 300 acres). Within these territories, they have many different places to find food. This helps them find enough food for a long time. Even if two groups' territories overlap, they usually don't interact much because their feeding spots are spread out.
The golden lion tamarin eats many different things. Their diet includes fruits, flowers, nectar, bird eggs, insects, and small animals. They use special small places in their habitat to find food. These include bromeliads, palm trees, woody cracks, vines, tree bark, and rotten logs. The golden lion tamarin uses its long fingers to pull prey out of small spaces. This is called micromanipulation. Insects make up about 10–15% of their diet. Most of the rest is small, sweet fruits. During the rainy season, they eat mostly fruit. But in drier times, they eat more nectar, gums, and small animals because insects are harder to find.
Social Structure
Golden lion tamarins are very social animals. Their groups usually have 2 to 8 members. These groups often have one adult male and one adult female who breed. But sometimes, a group might have 2 or 3 males and one female, or the other way around. The other members are usually younger tamarins, like teenagers and babies, who are the offspring of the adults.
If there is more than one breeding adult in a group, one is usually in charge. They keep this power through their behavior. Both males and females can leave their family group when they are about four years old. Young females might take over as the breeding female if their mother dies. If this happens, the breeding male (who is likely her father) will leave the group to avoid breeding with his daughter. This does not happen with males and their fathers.
Young males who leave their group often join other males. They stay together until they find a chance to join a new group. Most new members joining groups are males. A male might join a group if the main male dies or disappears. Sometimes, two male brothers might even force the main male out of his group. When this happens, only one of the new males will be able to breed. Golden lion tamarins are very protective of their territory. Groups will defend their home area and food from other groups.
Tamarins make different sounds to communicate. They make "whine" and "peep" calls for alarms or to show they are allies. "Clucks" are made when they are looking for food or during fights with other tamarins or predators. "Trills" are used to talk over long distances and show where an individual is. "Rasps" or "screeches" are usually for playful behavior. Tamarins also use smells to mark their territory. Breeding males and females mark their territory the most. Dominant males use scent marking to show their high social status.
Reproduction and Life Cycle
Golden lion tamarins usually have one male and one female who mate. Sometimes, a male might mate with two females, usually a mother and her daughter. Their breeding season depends on the rain. Mating is highest at the end of the rainy season, from late March to mid-June. Babies are born most often during the September–February rains.
Females can have babies when they are 15–20 months old, but they usually don't reproduce until they are 30 months old. Only the main female in a group can have babies. Males can start breeding around 28 months. Tamarins are pregnant for about four months.
Golden lion tamarin groups work together to raise their babies. This is because mothers often give birth to twins, and sometimes even triplets or quadruplets. A mother cannot take care of so many babies by herself. She needs help from the other group members. Younger tamarins in the group might not get to breed themselves, but they learn how to be good parents by helping with their younger siblings. For the first 4 weeks, babies rely completely on their mother for milk and rides on her back. By week five, babies spend less time on their mother's back and start to explore. Young tamarins become juveniles at 17 weeks and will play with other group members. They become sub-adults at 14 months, which is when they start acting like adults.
Ecosystem Roles
The golden lion tamarin helps many plants in the Atlantic Forest. They have a special relationship where both the tamarins and the plants benefit. The tamarins eat fruits and then spread the seeds to new places when they move around. This is called seed dispersal. Spreading seeds far from the parent plant is very good for the seeds to grow. This seed spreading is important for the forest to grow back and helps endangered plant species survive.
Predation
Studies show that more predators have caused the golden lion tamarin population to drop. Predators often attack tamarins at their sleeping spots, which are usually tree holes. These predators can make the tree holes bigger to get to the tamarins, sometimes wiping out an entire family. Tamarins prefer sleeping in tree holes in living trees, especially those near other large trees with some open space above. These spots offer safety and easy access to food.
Most tree holes are low to the ground, making them easy to enter. Tree holes in living trees are also drier, warmer, and have fewer insects, which means less chance of getting sick. Having less tree cover above helps tamarins spot predators faster. Being surrounded by other large trees gives them escape routes.
Because their habitat is being destroyed, there are fewer trees big enough for whole groups to sleep in. Some tamarins have to use bamboo, vine tangles, or bromeliads as sleeping spots. These places offer less protection, making them easier targets for predators. Golden lion tamarins use different sleeping spots, but they don't change them very often. They prefer to reuse safe spots. However, this means predators can learn where these spots are. Tamarins also mark their den holes with scent, which helps them find their way back quickly in the afternoon when predators are most active. But this strong scent also helps predators find them. Also, more deforestation means less habitat, giving predators easier access to the tamarins. This has led to a drop in their numbers.
Conservation Efforts
The golden lion tamarin population faces many dangers. These include illegal logging (cutting down trees illegally), poaching (illegal hunting), mining, urbanization (cities growing), deforestation (forests being cleared), pet trading, and new roads being built. Also, new animals or plants that are not native to the area (called alien species) can cause problems.
In 1969, there were only about 150 golden lion tamarins left in the Atlantic Forest. Because of this, in 1975, the golden lion tamarin was listed under CITES Appendix I. This means it is an animal threatened with extinction that might be affected by trade. In 1982, the IUCN listed the species as Endangered. By 1984, the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. and the World Wide Fund for Nature started a program to bring captive-born tamarins back to the wild. This program worked well. By 2003, a new population was successfully living in the União Biological Reserve. This allowed the species to be downgraded to endangered, but the IUCN still warns that their habitat is very broken up by deforestation. This means the wild population cannot grow much more. To help the golden lion tamarin, several conservation programs have been started. The goal is to make the wild population stronger and keep a safe population in zoos worldwide.
Reintroduction Programs
Because so much of their home was lost, the wild golden lion tamarin population became endangered in the early 1980s. Starting in 1983, scientists and conservationists made a huge effort to put golden lion tamarins born in zoos back into the wild. With help from the Brazilian government, they set up the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve and the União Biological Reserve as places for these tamarins to live again.
The goals of this reintroduction program are to:
- Increase the number of tamarins in the wild.
- Increase the variety of their genes (genetic diversity) in the wild population.
- Give them more places to live that are like their original home in Brazil.
- Teach more people about the golden lion tamarin and why it needs protection.
The first step of reintroduction often happens at zoos. Tamarins can explore the whole zoo but are kept on the grounds by a special box where their food is kept. When tamarins are released into the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, they need a lot of training and care. For the first 6–18 months, the reintroduced groups are watched closely. Also, 1 or 2 tamarins from each group wear a radio collar so they can be tracked. All reintroduced tamarins are also marked so they can be easily identified.
Moving Tamarins to New Homes
To help save the golden lion tamarins from extinction, some have been moved from small, unsafe forests to larger, protected forests. They were moved to the União Biological Reserve and Poço das Antas Reserve. This effort began in 1991. When they were moved, the tamarins faced a risk of getting new diseases they hadn't been exposed to before. Many caught a disease called callitrichid hepatitis.
Even with the challenge of illness, the population of the 42 moved golden lion tamarins grew to over 200 in the União Biological Reserve. The number of wild golden lion tamarins is now in the thousands across all reserves and ranches in Brazil. These numbers were once as low as 200 in 1991. By 2025, it is hoped that more than 2,000 golden lion tamarins will be protected.
Effects of Habitat Loss
Golden lion tamarins originally lived in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Their home stretched from the southern part of Rio de Janeiro state to the southern part of Espirito Santo state. However, cutting down the Atlantic Forest for business, hunting, and capturing tamarins for the pet trade has limited their population to only about five areas in Rio de Janeiro. Most of the population now lives in the Poco das Antas Biological Reserve.
Because of deforestation and the breaking up of the Atlantic forest, their home areas have become smaller. The forest is now thousands of small pieces, making up only 8% of its original size. This directly affects where they can find food and how much food is available.
How Habitat Loss Affects Young Tamarins
The type of trees in the habitat also affects how tamarins behave and interact. For example, the trees greatly influence the behavior of young golden lion tamarins. Young tamarins often play with other tamarins of different ages and even other species. This play is very important for them to learn social skills, thinking skills, and how to move. It also helps them learn how to act when they face competition or predators.
Social play happens more often on large branches (more than 10 cm wide) and in vine tangles (4 meters above ground). These areas are safer for them because they are less exposed to predators. Playing in dangerous areas, like thin canopy branches or on the forest floor, makes them more vulnerable. So, deforestation reduces the safe places for young tamarins to play. This means less play, and less learning of important survival behaviors. If they do play in dangerous areas, they are more exposed to predators, which can lead to fewer tamarins.
Increase in Inbreeding
Deforestation and habitat breaking up also lead to problems with their population numbers. It increases the chance of inbreeding, which is when closely related animals mate. Inbreeding can cause "inbreeding depression," meaning the offspring are less healthy and less likely to survive. This leads to a drop in the population.
The problem is that golden lion tamarins live in more and more isolated forest patches. Inbreeding leads to low levels of genetic diversity (less variety in their genes). Inbred babies are less likely to survive than babies from parents who are not related. When their habitat is broken up, tamarins are less likely to move to new groups. This means they breed with relatives more often.
To find enough food and suitable places to live, golden lion tamarins need to move around. But moving to new areas is risky and takes a lot of energy. This energy could have been used for having babies instead.
Yellow Fever Epidemic
A yellow fever outbreak from 2016 to 2018 in southeastern Brazil greatly affected the golden lion tamarin population. It reduced their numbers by 32%, leaving about 2,516 individuals. The tamarins faced more losses in larger forest areas that had fewer edges and were more connected. These conditions could help mosquitoes that carry yellow fever to spread the disease.
The outbreak was very damaging in the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve. The population there dropped from about 400 tamarins to only 32. This decline was partly blamed on human activities, like the expansion of the BR-101 highway, which brings a constant flow of traffic into the area. Researchers noted that the disease spread quickly across Brazil because infected people moved around.
To fight the epidemic, Brazilian scientists created a special yellow fever vaccine just for golden lion tamarins. The vaccine program started in 2021. By February 2023, over 300 tamarins had been vaccinated, and no bad effects were reported. The vaccine works very well, with 90-95% of tested monkeys showing protection. By February 2023, the yellow fever outbreak had calmed down, and the tamarin population had become stable.
Images for kids
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A male golden lion tamarin at the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark.
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A female golden lion tamarin at the Bronx Zoo in New York, United States.
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A close-up of a golden lion tamarin's face.
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Golden lion tamarin family groups can have up to eight members.
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A mother golden lion tamarin carries her baby in the early stages of its life.
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A golden lion tamarin vocalizing.
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An aerial view of the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve.
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The golden lion tamarin is featured on the R$20 banknote in Brazil.
See also
In Spanish: Tamarino león dorado para niños
