San Diego Zoo Spider monkeys at San Diego Zoo

vogelcommando

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
By going through some old zoo-magazines I found a quite intresting article in Zoonooz from Jan. 1980. It's about San Diego Zoo's Spider monkeys and the problems the breeding-females had with raising their babies After 4 hand-raised babies from several females one however started to raise her baby herself and it sounded altogether quite hopefull.
By checking some of the latest ISIS-records avaible to me ( from Feb. 2009 ) I found that the San Diego Zoo only had 1.2 Brown Spider monkeys left in the collection.
I would be intrested to learn more about the time between 1980 and 2009, what happened with the several groups they had at the beginning of 1980, howmany young have been bred in the meantime, were these hand- or parent-raired and were they send to other collections or is there another reason why San Diego was left with only 3 animals in 2009.
Does anybody has information about the present sithuation ( number of animals, breeding successes ) ? Any information would be appriciated !!
 
I only know about the 2 that are on exhibit at present. 1 male named Joe and a female named Lucy. They were moved to the exhibit next to the orangutans from the children's zoo when the construction for the 3D theater started. The keeper told me that they are both in their twenties and are scheduled to be moved off exhibit this fall.
 
There used to be some on an island at the Wild Animal Park next to one of the restaurants, but they have been gone for many years. They were replaced by ring-tailed lemurs, and I'm not sure if that exhibit even exists any more.

Spider monkeys used to be quite common in zoos, in California at least. I remember seeing them at the Oakland, Micke Grove (Lodi), Sacramento, Fresno, Charles Paddock Zoo (Atascadero), SDWAP, and Los Angeles Zoos. I think that only the LA Zoo still has them out of all of those zoos.
 
The zoo opened up the kids zoo today and they had several spider monkeys in the old cat cage. I forget which species they were, I didn't have my camera.
 
The zoo opened up the kids zoo today and they had several spider monkeys in the old cat cage. I forget which species they were, I didn't have my camera.

They are Peruvian Black-capped Squirrel Monkeys. I uploaded a few pictures to the gallery.
 
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