00:13Hi guys this is Amy from the Phoenix Zoo and today we're putting up some
00:16behavioral enrichment for our common squirrel monkeys. Monkey Village is a
00:23public accessed walkthrough squirrel monkey exhibit. It's one of the only ones
00:27in the country like this. The guests can actually come in and walk through the
00:30squirrel monkey habitat and the monkeys can be anywhere in the exhibit. They get
00:36different types of enrichment every day, different types of feeders and different
00:39types of food. Everything to make them interact with their exhibit and things
00:43keep things from getting boring. Most of them actually sat where they were with
00:50the kabobs and worked on the food for a while. Some of them did figure out how to
00:53unscrew the kabobs and ran away with the entire thing which wasn't exactly what I
00:57was aiming for, but it worked. Here at Monkey Village we have 14 squirrel monkeys.
01:03Five of them are original to the exhibit. The rest of them have been born here.
01:06They're all named after Star Trek characters and we have three different
01:09generations of monkeys living in here right now.
01:18Common squirrel monkeys are from South America. Squirrel monkeys are called squirrel
01:21monkeys because of their size and the way that they move through the trees in the
01:24forest remind the people of squirrels. The squirrel monkeys here get those
01:29necklaces every year at their doctor's visits. They're made on breakaway chains so
01:33that if they got caught on a pranching they break away very easily. We don't have to
01:36worry about them getting hurt. Every monkey has a different color which helps us
01:39tell who we're looking at very quickly.
01:42Tuvok is our youngest. He's about four months old and he's still learning how to be a
01:45monkey. So while he runs through the trees he trips a little bit. He falls sometimes. It's a lot of
01:50fun to watch.
01:50You will see him riding on his mom's back on occasion as well.
01:59Here in Monkey Village because we don't have a grown male we have our females are in charge.
02:03In the wild the males would be. The most common behavior that guests will probably
02:07see is called urine washing where the squirrel monkeys actually pee on their
02:10hands and their feet. That way everything they touch smells like them and it's
02:13their way of marking their territory. It's time to stop monkeying around but
02:16thanks for learning about squirrel monkeys with me at the Phoenix Zoo.
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