Monkeys Monkeys Monkeys

A big hello to the lurkers who continue to check in. Hi, guys! Hope your July is treating you well. Any big plans for the weekend? I know what I’ll be doing. Step One: See Transformers. Step Two: Obsessively visit one particular walk at the zoo.

This post is dedicated to Maureen, who is a bit obsessed. (Maureen, I have joined the I Heart Monkeys Club.)

ANNOUNCEMENT: There are free-ranging monkeys at the National Zoo. A family of Golden Lion Tamarins, to be exact. Everyone should go see them. Why? Well, take a look:

That is a proud papa monkey carrying two baby monkeys on his back. Click on the picture to see it bigger. The adult is named Eduardo. The babies, born May 26th, do not have names yet.

(I must disclose that any information here is freely available on the zoo website or signs at the zoo. The pictures are my own, and I am speaking as a zoo visitor only.)

Over on the left are 7 month old twins named Mara (left) and Moe (right). All of these monkeys are part of the same family.

Wow, look, here are the Golden Lion Tamarins on TV! Or Tamarin-cam. A bit like Panda-cam only, dare I say it…cooler? Cuter? I mean, two baby monkeys vs. one not-so-baby panda. Hmmmm…

The video is from their “nest box” which is a modified eskie that they go into to sleep or when it rains. If they aren’t visible on the video, they are probably outside, running free.

I could spend hours watching these guys. Yesterday, I did.

Below and to the right is another picture of Eduardo and the little ones.

If you want to find out more about Tamarins, check out the awesome zoo website, which is chockers with information like the following, all of which was gleaned from said site:

• They are native to Brazil, where they live in the coastal forest outside of Rio.
• Goodness but they’re endangered! Only about 1500 left of them in the wild (up from 200 in the 1970s).
• They eat insects, fruit, small vertebrates (think little lizards), and (in the zoo) “canned marmoset diet.”
• They live in small family groups of 2-8 usually consisting of a mated pair and their younger offspring.
• They usually give birth to twins.
• For the past 22 years, the zoo has been releasing a group of tamarins every summer.

On the topic of golden monkeys, who is excited about the upcoming Golden Compass Movie? (For those who don’t know, The Golden Compass is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, the first in the trilogy knows as His Dark Materials. New Line is putting out a movie based on the book this winter, starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman.

The book takes place in a world in which everyone has what is called a daemon: an outward, animal-shaped physical manifestation of the person’s soul. Kidman’s character, Mrs. Coulter, has a daemon that is a golden monkey. Craig’s character has what’s called a snow leopard, named Stellamaria.

According to the mythology of the book, when you are a child, your daemon can change shape, and when you become an adult, your daemon ‘settles’ into a particular shape, which is a reflection of your personality. (I wrote an essay about this for an upcoming anthology published by Benbella books and edited by Scott Westerfeld.)

If you click on the above link, you’ll be taken to a website where you can “find your own daemon.” It’s awesome. My daemon was a tiger named Arkadion. Sailor Boy’s was an ermine named Brienne. I can’t speak for SB, but when I saw that cat stalking out of the mist (it’s a very java-y site) I was like, “yep, that’s about right.”

Okay, back to the monkeys.

That’s mama monkey, Laranja, at right above, acting shy, and below, sitting in the bromeliad and making noise.

Have a great weekend, everyone!