Keeper finds ‘incredibly rare’ twins on parents’ backs in surprise birth at Iowa zoo
A zookeeper was surprised one day to find two baby monkeys clinging to their parents’ backs at an Iowa zoo — because no one realized the mom was pregnant.
The Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines has now welcomed twin members of an “incredibly rare” species: cotton-top tamarins.
In 2023, parents Kida and Eddie were brought to the zoo as part of a species survival plan to encourage the mating of the critically endangered monkeys. They became first-time parents on Feb. 22, also marking the first cotton-top tamarins born at the zoo, the facility announced March 8.
“We were very hopeful that they would have babies this year,” Ryan Bickel with the Blank Park Zoo told McClatchy News.
Zookeepers said they had been familiarizing Kida with ultrasound and radiography technology for when she would eventually become pregnant, but the day came sooner than expected.
“As it turns out, she had lost weight during her pregnancy and other veterinary tests led us to believe she was not pregnant,” Bickel said. “So yes, we were surprised when she gave birth.”
Zoe Wilson, a small mammal keeper at the zoo, came in one morning to do her routine check on the tamarins. She didn’t think anything of it when she saw them in their nest box, likely grooming each other.
“I came back about 20 minutes later, and I saw something crawling on the back of Kida,” Wilson said in a video shared by the zoo. “Honestly at first I thought it was a lizard. Don’t know why, but it was like the size of a lizard.”
Tamarins are small primates, typically weighing less than a pound, according to researchers.
When Wilson realized what she was looking at, she called the veterinarian staff in. She described the twins’ births as the happiest moment the team has had in a long time.
“We haven’t had a birth on the small mammal team in four years,” Wilson said. “And especially not really knowing that it was going to happen at all, and you just come to work and you have a nice little surprise gift waiting for you when you get there.”
Cotton-top tamarins get their name from the distinctive white patches of fur on top of their heads, according to Zoo New England. They’re native to northwestern Colombia but face increasing threats, primarily habitat loss, that have led to a smaller population over time.
“Deforestation has been a major cause in their decline,” chief animal officer Jay Tetzloff said in a news release. “We hope that guests will learn steps they can take in Iowa to reduce the demand for products that cause deforestation.”
Roughly 7,400 tamarins are alive today, according to estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
“Cotton top tamarins co-parent, so guests can look forward to seeing the twins sometimes both being on one parent or each parent holding a baby,” zookeepers said.
The tamarin parents have been so attentive to their babies that the team hasn’t been able to do a neonatal assessment.
The babies “constantly attached” to their parents for the first few weeks of life, according to Wilson. When the twins are around 5 weeks old, animal care staff will do full exam.
“The parents are doing such a good job taking care of them,” Bickel said. “That’s exactly the way we want it.”
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