Rare Monkey to Go Forth and, Hopefully, Multiply

Irma Gonzales cared for Mimi almost as if she was her own child. So with plans for Mimi and her father to move to Phoenix, Gonzales can’t help but feel some empty-nest pangs.

“We all have favorite animals here,” said Gonzales, a zookeeper at the Santa Ana Zoo for almost 15 years. “Mimi is special to me because we raised her here, and I will miss her.”

Mimi, and her father, Stash, are rare Central American red-backed squirrel monkeys that have spent five years climbing, chattering and munching on monkey chow in their cage in Santa Ana. But in about two months, they will be sent to the Phoenix Zoo to participate in a breeding program with a third squirrel monkey.

The primates are critically endangered worldwide, and the Phoenix Zoo’s breeding program will be the nation’s first for the species.

“We have mixed feelings,” said Connie Sweet, the Santa Ana Zoo’s animal curator. “They’ve been here a long time, since 1985, and we all hate to lose them. They’re a member of our family. But we realize the only hope for these animals in the long run is to get them in a breeding program.”

The 2-pound monkeys are found only in Central America, where destruction of tropical rain forests has caused their numbers to dwindle. Zoologists believe fewer than 3,000 remain in Costa Rica, plus an unknown number in Panama.

Mimi and Stash were the only two red-backed squirrel monkeys in captivity in North America until a young male, a potential mate for Mimi, was found in October in Boston. Federal wildlife officials confiscated the animal from a home where it was being kept illegally as a pet.

Sweet said the Santa Ana Zoo would have liked to keep all three monkeys and manage the breeding program. But because California has stringent quarantine laws, it would have cost the zoo about $2,000 to quarantine the young male, so all three monkeys will reside in Phoenix instead.

The high-strung monkeys are one of the rarest species in the 18-acre Santa Ana Zoo, which has a collection of 53 primates among other animals.

Mimi was born in August, 1985, at the San Diego Zoo. Her mother died giving birth, and San Diego officials donated both Mimi and Stash to the Santa Ana Zoo.

For several months, two zookeepers brought the motherless baby home at night, feeding it every few hours and keeping it warm. Gonzales was the monkey’s daytime mother.

“It was a lot of fun,” Gonzales said. “We raised her almost like an infant, with bottle feedings and vitamins.”

After a while, Mimi was given a surrogate mother--a furry paint roller.

“She was so tiny,” Gonzales recalls, “and it was the only thing she would hang onto.”

Shy Mimi often sits on a branch, hugging her foot-long tail and rocking back and forth like an insecure child. Yet she can be nasty. Unlike Stash, who apparently feels less threatened, Mimi sometimes will start a high-pitched chattering, then bite the nearest zookeeper without provocation.

“She is perfectly healthy, but she was hand-raised, so she picked up some strange behavior,” Sweet explained.

Zookeepers are eager to see if Mimi and the new male, which is only about 6 months old, will breed.

Biologists fear that the tiny monkeys will eventually be wiped out in the wild, so the breeding program is critical to the survival of the species.

“The ultimate purpose is to get a good, viable captive population so if the situation of the habitat in the wild changes, they can be reintroduced in their original habitat,” Sweet said.

Gonzales said she is happy that Mimi and Stash will have the chance to help propagate their species.

“Hopefully, I’ll go visit her,” she said. “Arizona isn’t that far away.”