THANE’S FIELD NOTES
Cotton-Top Tamarin
(Saguinus oedipus)
Cotton-tops, at one pound, are among the smallest monkeys in the world. The first time I saw one was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison while visiting Dr. Charles Snowdon’s cotton-top tamarin laboratory. I met a young grad student there named Anne Savage, who would eventually become the world’s leading authority on this little monkey.
Nowadays, Anne often refers to cotton-top tamarins as little monkeys “with punk rock hairstyles.” Working with them in captivity on a daily basis at the University of Wisconsin, she got to know them intimately and individually. Eventually she went to northwest Colombia to study their behavior in the wild for her PhD thesis research.
But of course, a squirrel-size monkey is hard to study from afar. And much like the squirrels in your backyard, they are extremely difficult to tell apart. So some of Anne’s early research involved dyeing the white hair on the tops of the tamarins’ heads so she could distinguish among them. This didn’t hurt the monkeys; in fact, she used the same hair products used by people, just in much smaller quantities. And it is through these observations, as well as the use of innovative teeny little backpack radio transmitters, that Anne and her team unlock the behavioral biology of this endangered primate.
When asked what some of her favorite memories of her two decades observing cotton-tops have been, she chuckled and said, “Nothing is cuter than looking up in the trees after the babies are born. Cotton-tops almost always give birth to twins, and they are about the size of your pinkie finger with a long tail when they are born.”
And Anne added that it’s fun to watch them develop. Cotton-tops go through many of the same growth sequences that other primates, including people, go through. In fact, she said, “Babies go through a babbling time where they are practicing vocalizations all day long that eventually come to sound more like their parents’. They learn to use certain chirps or calls in the appropriate circumstances.”
Today Anne and her team are trying to assess the population of cotton-top tamarins in Colombia. However, since they are still hunted for the pet trade, the monkeys run away from people, which means researchers can’t simply walk through a forest and count the number of tamarins. So they use a trick learned from bird researchers and play vocalizations of other cotton-tops to draw them in. Unfortunately, the team has discovered that there are fewer tamarins than they had previously estimated. Anne told me that when they complete the forest surveys, it looks like there will be fewer than ten thousand tamarins remaining in the wild.
One of the reasons it’s so important to protect the cotton-tops who still live in the wild is that they don’t fare well in captive breeding programs. For some reason, they often develop colon cancer in captivity. Scientists are studying this and are still not sure why it occurs. It could be the stress of captivity or something missing from their diet that would ordinarily be found in the forest.
The good news is that when cotton-tops are given enough suitable habitats, they breed well on their own and can maintain a healthy population. “As a species, they don’t tend to suffer high infant mortality,” Anne told me. “So the secret is really in building on the reasons for local people to get involved in protecting the forest.”
Which is why Anne founded Proyecto Tití, a remarkable group in northwest Colombia that works with the local community to protect the endangered cotton-top tamarin. The name comes from the Colombian word for “monkey,” tití, and today the program involves dozens of Colombian biologists and students, as well as educators and community development efforts throughout the region.
TROUBLE WITH PLASTIC GROCERY BAGS
Early on in her fieldwork, Anne realized that the Colombian forests were shrinking due to a number of factors, including human encroachment. As communities move closer to the forests, they need to cut down more and more trees just to build their houses or have firewood for cooking their food. So one of the things that Proyecto Tití has done is come up with cheap and effective ways to help protect the forests, while also benefiting local people.
First, Anne and her team looked at how people used wood in their cooking. In most rural communities in Colombia, as around the world, they cook over an open fire. A family of five uses about fifteen logs every day to cook their meals. The Proyecto Tití team came up with a very simple cookstove called a binde, which is made out of clay. Instead of burning fifteen logs a day, they just need five logs to cook the same amount of food.
Another challenge of the local communities is that they have no way to manage their waste—in particular, the growth of plastic waste is inundating the area. Most noticeable are plastic bags—the kind you get at the grocery store—which are littered everywhere: roadsides, fields, and even in the tamarins’ forest. But the bags weren’t just an eyesore. They put wildlife at risk because animals come into contact with plastic that may have food items on it, or can transmit disease. Or sometimes animals even ingest the plastic bags, creating a nightmare.
So Proyecto Tití partnered with fifteen local women who are heads of households but did not have any consistent source of outside income. These women now crochet tote bags, not using wool yarn, but using plastic from the bags littering the ground. And while this sounds small-scale, these women have already recycled more than a million trash bags in the making of the “eco-mochilas,” as they are called.
This solution-based program is a classic win–win, since the trash bags have become a valuable commodity. Anne pointed out that, “as the eco-mochilas grow in popularity, people from throughout the region know that they are helping to protect the tamarins and the forest as well.”
Today there is a consortium of national and international conservation organizations working to protect the last remaining dry tropical forests in Colombia. Though the press most often references the dangers and drugs and crime in this South American nation, Anne pointed out that there is indeed hope for the future: “Most importantly, we are going to see a new protected reserve for cotton-top tamarins in coming years.”
When I asked Anne what the future might look like for the cotton-tops fifty years from now in Colombia, she was optimistic. Not only have Proyecto Tití and other regional conservation groups helped to shift public pride and awareness, Anne said young people are taking a growing interest in conserving both wildlife and habitat. In fact, many Colombian students study wildlife biology in the United States or Europe and then return home to apply their knowledge. “What gives me hope,” she said, “is to see that next generation really coming into fruition right now, developing long-term conservation plans to save species in Colombia.”