Oregon Zoo's Three Surviving Tamarins are "Alert and Chatty"

Two of the surviving cotton-top tamarins at the Oregon Zoo.

The Oregon Zoo garnered unwelcome attention this spring when six endangered cotton-top tamarins died in quarantine after traveling 50 hours in a van from Harvard Medical School.

News media have focused less on the fates of the three surviving monkeys, including an infant.

WW checked in on the those tamarins by filing a request under Oregon public records law for the internal zoo reports tracking their health.

Those records, first reported in Wednesday's Murmurs, show the trio is doing just fine.

The daily health reports, dating from July 1 through July 22, often repeat basic descriptions word for word over several days. But they show a progression, with the monkeys becoming more active over the month.

A keeper wrote July 7 that the trio was "behaving oddly"—refusing to emerge from their crate. (This may have been especially noteworthy since one keeper had theorized that the tamarins' initial nest boxes—plastic picnic coolers with entry holes cut in them—had contributed to the six deaths.)

By July 15, the monkeys were interacting more with zoo staff. "Youngster is very active," a keeper wrote, "and readily came down and took an egg from me this AM."


 

"Very alert and chatty," a keeper reported July 21—a phrase repeated in most of the reports toward the month's close. (This one also notes the baby tamarin is a thief.)

 

Read all 22 daily reports here

WWeek 2015

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