Zecke and Florian
Mundo Azul supports the Amazon Orphanage Pilpintuwasi
The Saki monkeys “Zecke” and “Florian”
These two Saki monkeys have been at Pilpintuwasi for about 3 years. “Zecke” ,the female, arrived in June 2003, and “Florian” in November.
Saki monkeys have a very pretty fluffy tail once they are adult – and that’s their bad luck, because people hunt them to sell that tail – believe it or not – as a duster!!!
“Zecke” was brought to us by a man from the village who had been hunting up the river Nanay. He had killed quite a few monkeys for food and also took several babies from the dead monkeys. He wanted to sell them in Iquitos, so he put all the monkey-babies in a little cage: five whooly monkeys and one Saki monkey. It took him several days to come back to our village from his hunt, and getting home he noticed, that the whooly monkeys had been biting the little Saki monkey and that she was in a very bad state.
When he brought her to Pilpintuwasi the little thing had almost no hair. Her tail was a mass of puss and she was very dehydrated and malnourished. The first weeks she practically lived on Gudruns neck – and it was almost impossible to take her away from there. When Gudrun tried, she was bitten – which is why she got the name “Zecke”, which means ‘tick’ in German. “Zecke” got better, but one day Gudrun noticed that she wanted to bite off the last 10 cms of her tail – the part which had seemed to be dried completely – and so this part of her tail had to be amputated.
“Zecke” is a very special monkey with a big repertoire of sounds but with a special dislike for children. There must be some reason – she runs to them at soon as she hears children’s voices and puts her arms around the ankles of the kids. If they aren’t afraid and want to play with her, she plays a little while and then goes off, but if they scream, she bites them.
“Florian” is a male Saki. His mother died at a veterinarian’s house and he called Gudrun telling her that he didn’t have the patience to raise the little fellow – he only weighed 250 gramms. As “Florian” arrived after “Zecke”, he had the advantage of being with one of his species and he wasn’t as attached to people as “Zecke”. He isn’t as sociable as the other monkeys and he’s got a very funny habit – he loves to suck his thumb.
Help us repairing a little bit of the damage humans have done to these animals.
• $5 will care for one of the turtles for a month;
• $30 for feed Rosa the anteater until she moves onto ants;
• $50 will feed all of the birds;
• $280 will feed Pedro Bello, the Jaguar;
• $250 will provide care for the Ocelot.
