Critically Endangered
Cotton-top tamarin
Saguinus oedipus
The cotton-top tamarin is a small New World monkey weighing less than 0.5 kg (1.1 lb).
Appearance
The cotton-top tamarin has a long sagittal crest, consisting of white hairs, from forehead to nape flowing over the shoulders. The skin of the face is black with gray or white bands located above the eyes. Tamarins are generally divided into three groups by their facial characteristics: hairy-faced, mottled-faced, and bare-faced.
One of the smallest primates, the cotton-top tamarin is easily recognized by the long, white sagittal crest extending from its forehead to its shoulders.
The cotton-top tamarin is part of the most diminutive family of monkeys, Callitrichidae, the marmosets and tamarins. It weighs 432 g (15.2 oz) on average.
Range and habitat
The cotton-top tamarin is restricted to a small area of northwest Colombia, between the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers to the south and east, the Atlantic coast to the north, and the Atrato River to the west. Historically, the entire area was suitable for the cotton-top tamarin, but due to habitat loss through deforestation, it survives in fragmented parks and reserves. One of the most important areas for the cotton-top is the Paramillo National Park, that consists of 460,000 hectares (1,800 mi2) of primary and secondary forests.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The cotton-top tamarin has a diet of mainly fruit (40%) and animal material (40%). Due to its small body size and high food passage rate, its diet must be high-quality and high-energy.
While larger primates eat larger seeds, tamarins eat the smaller ones. The cotton-top tamarin is diurnal and sleeps with its social group in trees with foliage cover. In particular, groups form a clear dominance hierarchy where only dominant pairs breed.
In crisis
It is currently classified as critically endangered and is one of the rarest primates in the world, with only 6,000 individuals left in the wild. The wild population is estimated at 6,000 individuals, with 2,000 adults. This species is critically endangered, and was listed in "The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates between 2008 and 2012." The publication lists highly endangered primate species and is released every two years by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group.
Up to 40,000 individuals were caught and exported for research into those diseases, as well as Epstein–Barr virus, for the benefit of humans. Although enough individuals are in captivity to sustain the species, it is still critically endangered in the wild.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Cotton-top tamarin is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Cotton-top tamarin, Wikidata item Q137528. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
