Cotton-top tamarin

The cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) is a small New World monkey of the family Callitrichidae that weighs less than half a kilogram, averaging about 432 grams. It is easily recognised by the long white crest that runs from its forehead to its shoulders. The species lives in tropical forest edges and secondary forests in northwestern Colombia, where it is arboreal and diurnal, eats insects and plant exudates, and acts as a seed disperser. Groups form a clear dominance hierarchy in which only the dominant pair breeds, and the female normally gives birth to twins. Up to 40,000 animals were taken for biomedical research before 1976, when CITES gave the species its highest level of protection. Today it is classified as critically endangered, with only about 6,000 individuals left in the wild, because the lowland forest it depends on has shrunk to about 5 percent of its former area.