Racine Zoo welcomes baby emperor tamarin

RACINE -- The Racine Zoo announced Wednesday, August 1 a pair of emperor tamarins have just welcomed a little one.

The baby tamarin was born on Monday, July 16. The baby's mother, Isabella, originally from New England Zoo and dad Marquis, from San Francisco Zoo have been a breeding pair in Racine since the summer of 2012.

According to the zoo, this is their seventh tamarin birth. Isabella and Marquis had a single birth in 2014, a set of twins born in 2016, another set of twins in 2017 and one in December 2017.

The Racine Zoo and the Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota are currently the only zoos successfully breeding this type of tamarin.

Over the past three years, the population of emperor tamarins has grown by an average of seven percent, according to zoo officials.

Dad, Marquis, and brother, Pierre, are spending a majority of the time carrying the infant, while mom mainly handles the nursing. With this being her first younger sibling, sister Amelie is just starting to pitch in after spending the week observing appropriate infant care.

Wild emperor tamarins are found in western Amazonia, where large rivers restrict their circulation. They live in small areas of lowland tropical rainforest in parts of Peru, Brazil and
Bolivia. Due to their fairly small size, the emperor tamarin has a number of predators within their natural habitat such as wild cats, snakes and birds.

The tamarin population numbers are rapidly declining due to deforestation causing habitat loss.