Animal：Golden Touch of the Red-handed Tamarin
【明報專訊】The red-handed tamarin(赤掌獠狨) must be one of the cutest monkeys out there. Small faced with oversized ears, it is clothed completely in long, black fur – except for its hands and feet. To add to its cuteness, it is cuddly in size, only a mere foot in height with a tail twice as long!
Native to the Amazon rainforest, these agile primates enjoy leaping from tree to tree, or from trees to the ground. They are arboreal, meaning that they basically live among the trees. The red-handed tamarins are active during the day, and have a varied diet. They like eating fruit, plant sap (樹液), insects and even bird eggs. Their keen eye sight and well-developed sense of smell are very helpful in hunting for food.
Forest friends
Because they eat a lot of ripe fruits, red-handed tamarins also ingest quite an amount of seeds, which remain largely intact in their poo. As they live an active lifestyle moving from tree to tree, these little monkeys help to spread seeds around the forest.
Model families
The red-handed tamarins live in groups of two to eight, much like a small, extended family. The family is led by a breeding female, usually with two or more breeding males. That is more or less like having one mother and more than one father. There is much harmony in the family, with members often working together as a team with cooperation and tolerance.
Adult tamarins can start to breed when they are 16 to 20 months old. After a gestation period of 140 to 145 days, usually two babies are born. The whole red-handed tamarin family assists in delivering the baby tamarins. The love and care from the family continues as the babies grow. Each young tamarin is raised by everyone in the family.
Midas touch
In ancient Greek legend, King Midas turned everything he touched into gold. From this, we have the term the Midas touch, or the golden touch. The red-handed tamarins are also called Midas tamarins. In their own way, they also have the golden touch: they have golden orange hands and feet.
At the moment, red-handed tamarins are found mostly in the rainforest or savanna forests of Northern Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana (圭亞那) and Suriname (蘇里南) in South America. However, the Amazon forests are quickly becoming fragmented and tattered, as human habitation grows and forests are destroyed. So the seed-spreading work of the red-handed tamarins is important in regenerating the forests.
Perhaps we could all try to develop our golden touch by conserving forests and spreading the message around. How would you conserve forest resources?
Text and photos: Ocean Park Hong Kong
[Smarties' Power English 第294期]
