New to us in 2024, Mila and Mycroft have certainly kept the keepers on their toes! These two charismatic common marmosets love climbing around their enclosure and foraging for bugs outdoors.
Click the tabs below to read about this animal.
The common marmoset is a New World monkey. It originally lived on the North eastern coast of Brazil, in the states of Piaui, Paraiba, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Alagoas and Bahia.
They have claw like nails, known as tegulae, on their fingers, and nails on their thumbs. This allows them to grip the bark of trees when climbing. Unlike a lot of primates they do not have opposable thumbs.
They use their specialized claws to establish a firm grip on tree trunks and gnaw little holes in the bark with their lower incisors and canines, causing the tree to produce sap. A valuable source of carbohydrates and minerals!
The common marmoset is an exudativore and insectivore. This means that their diet consists mainly of exudates, material that oozes out of a plant such as gum, sap and resin. They also eat lots of insects, fruit, vegetables, seeds, snails and infant mammals.
12 years in the wild (18 in captivity)
Dominance is maintained though various behaviours, postures and vocalizations and subordinates will groom their superior. The group communicates with a range of calls, some of these calls are too high pitched for the human ear to hear as marmosets can hear higher frequencies than humans. scent is used to mark out territories, and to communicate, with each marking giving detailed information about the identity of the marker.
Least Concern
All male marmosets are colour blind, confusing reds, greens, browns and oranges. Females can be colour blind too, but most females will see colour the same as a human does.
