Producer: Ronnie Godeanu
Writer: Karen de Seve
Art Director: Sabina Daley
Graphic Art: Karen Mattson
Technical Director: Brian Patrick Lee
Scientific Consultant: Gianna Scaralia

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Anthony Chapman, Director of Interactive & Broadband.

©1998 Thirteen/WNET New York

All Rights Reserved

Television Credits

A Co-Production of Thirteen/WNET and Survival Anglia Ltd.

Funder Credits

Funding for the TV series NATURE is made possible in part by Park Foundation. Major corporate support is provided by Canon U.S.A., Inc., Ford Motor Company, and TIAA-CREF. Additional support is provided by the nation’s public television stations.

We recommend these Web sites for those interested in the subjects shown on the program. All links are valid as of October 6, 2000.

Golden Lion Tamarin Basic Facts
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/conservationandscience/endangeredspecies/gltprogram/learn/basicfacts.cfm
Information from the National Zoo.

Marmosets and Tamarins
www.snowcrest.net/goehring/a2/primates/marmoset.htm
General information on these miniature monkeys.

Project Tamarin
http://proyectotiti.com/
A program to shore up the endangered cotton-top tamarin of Colombia, with fact sheets, a photo gallery, and extensive links.

Golden Lion Tamarin Reintroduction
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/EndangeredSpecies/GLTProgram/
An article about the National Zoo’s effort to save golden lion tamarins from extinction.

The Belize Zoo — Margay
www.belizezoo.org/zoo/zoo/mammals/mar/mar1.html
An entry from the Belize Zoo’s animal archive, with information, photos, and a short video clip.

Print Resources

For those interested in the subjects shown in GREMLINS: FACES IN THE FOREST, we recommend the following books.

——. GRIZIMEK’S ANIMAL LIFE ENCYCLOPEDIA. Zurich: Kindler Verlag A.G., 1984.

Ancona, George. THE GOLDEN LION TAMARIN COMES HOME. New York: Macmillan, 1994.

Goldizen, Anne Wilson. TAMARINS AND MARMOSETS: COMMUNAL CARE OF OFFSPRING IN PRIMATE SOCIETIES. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Macdonald, David, ed. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MAMMALS. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1993.

Woolly monkeys live high in the trees.

The marmosets and tamarins of the NATURE program GREMLINS: FACES IN THE FOREST share the jungle with many other creatures. Here’s a look at some of them.

Woolly monkeys live in the South American rainforest from northern Colombia to Peru. Like marmosets and tamarins, they live in large families with as many as 20 other individuals. But those families grow slowly: female woolly monkeys give birth about every two years, which means that they are more vulnerable to population depletion from hunting and habitat loss. They inhabit a higher stratum of the forest world than gremlins do, remaining in the treetops a hundred feet above the smaller monkeys.

A member of the raccoon family, the kinkajou resides in Central and South America. It has a long, thin tongue that it uses to retrieve nectar from flowering plants, although it also eats fruit.

The boa constrictor is a predator to avoid in the Amazon jungle. Its decorated body blends in well with leaves, both on trees and on the ground. Rather than inject a victim with poisonous venom, the boa constrictor strangles its prey and swallows it whole, then digests it over three to four days, as you can see happen to a marmoset in the NATURE program. Adept tree climbers, boas can seize birds from midair. To swallow animals larger than their heads, the snakes unhinge their jaws.

Margays are excellent climbers.

Margays, also known as tiger cats, are small felines whose spots act as camouflage in the dense forest. The margay is the most agile climber of all the cats: it is the only member of the cat family whose ankle joints can rotate enough to allow it to climb down trees headfirst. Margays hunt after dark, relying on excellent night vision and a keen sense of smell.

The three-toed tree sloth, another creature of the trees, can barely walk on land. Saddled with an extremely slow metabolism that digests only leaves, the sloth moves at a crawling pace to conserve energy. Using its three claws as hooks to pull itself through the trees in search of leaves to eat, the three-toed sloth reaches a maximum speed of 0.15 miles per hour as it climbs.

Marmosets and tamarins live in high branches.

The thick foliage and tangled branches of the middle levels of the rainforest provide a good home for marmosets and tamarins. Living halfway between the ground and the treetops, they feast on a variety of fruits and insects among the leaves. As frugivores, or fruit eaters, marmosets and tamarins help cultivate trees by digesting and excreting the seeds of their meals along the forest floor. This seed dispersal helps diverse trees grow throughout the forest. While they may occasionally visit the ground in search of the meaty grubs and insects that live there, marmosets and tamarins swiftly retreat to the high branches at the first sign of danger. Predators like boa constrictors and margays make trips to the ground a risky enterprise, as you can see in GREMLINS: FACES IN THE FOREST.

Marmosets and tamarins, like other species that live in Central and South America, are called New World monkeys. Distinguished by specialized teeth and sharp claws, marmosets sport tails nearly twice the length of their bodies. The monkeys are always on the lookout for the proteins and minerals they need to stay alive, of which fruit and tree sap are good sources. With claws instead of nails and elongated teeth that allow them to gouge holes into tree trunks for the sap within, marmosets are uniquely equipped among monkeys. Adult marmosets claim their favorite sap sources by marking the area with urine. These scent markings also let younger family members know who is boss around the home range. Tamarins, lacking marmosets’ teeth and claws, are not able to dig into tree trunks, so they have developed another way to find important nutrients: they wait for the pods of the parkia tree to ripen and burst open, at which point the animals lick up the sap.

Marmoset males help rear the young.

Marmosets and tamarins live in families of as many as 15 monkeys; within this group, only the dominant female gives birth, usually to twins. While newborns weigh only one or two ounces, that’s a lot for a creature of this size: a pair of infants can weigh up to 25 percent of the mother’s body weight, the human equivalent of a mother bearing 15-pound twins. Depending on the species, gremlins weigh from 6 to 13 ounces at full growth. The father is more involved in the birth process than the males of most other species. He assists during labor by biting off the umbilical cord and cleaning up the afterbirth. After the babies are born, the father tends to the newborns whenever they are not nursing, giving the infants’ mother a chance to rest. No scientist fully understands why marmoset and tamarin males are more involved than other monkey fathers. Infants learn hunting and survival skills from their relatives, building a close family relationship by grooming one another. Grooming strengthens social bonds, which are especially important if another monkey group invades and starts a fight over territory. After 12 weeks, the newborns become independent.

Dispersed throughout parts of South and Central America, marmosets and tamarins do sometimes wreak havoc among themselves in fights over territory, but more often they live peacefully.

Marmosets and tamarins live in the Amazon. The Satare Maues believe that these monkeys are the reincarnations of their dead children, and tame marmosets and tamarins are common pets among Satare Maue women and children. Some carry the monkeys on their heads, where the animals perform a useful service by eating their head lice.

To make GREMLINS: FACES IN THE FOREST, wildlife filmmaker Nick Gordon and biologist Marc van Roosmalen traveled deep into the Amazon jungle. In search of a particularly elusive species of monkey, the golden white tassel ear marmoset, the filmmakers turned to those who knew the area and the animals best — the Satare Maues. This brought an unexpected dividend: the Indians led the film crew to discover a marmoset species new to the outside world, one with naked ears. In honor of the Indians, to whom this “new” marmoset is no novelty, the scientists named the animal the Satare Maues marmoset.

Online content for Gremlins: Faces in The Forest was originally posted June 2002.