Baby Monkey Rescued From Pet Trade Gets A Wild Family

The Dodo

Baby wooly monkey rescued from the pet trade gets a surrogate mom — watch as they get released to the wild with their new family. Ojo's rescuer told us about her recovery and the emotional moment they saw her months after her release!

Transcript

00:00When she first came in, she would cover her face.

00:02She would want to hide from the world.

00:05I saw a little bag of bones

00:08that vaguely resembled a baby woolly monkey.

00:13We discovered that she actually also had

00:15a gunshot pellet in her jaw.

00:18Once she plucked up the courage

00:19to kind of look at me directly,

00:21I saw these huge, beautiful eyes.

00:24Kind of knew at that moment

00:25that she had a chance to survive.

00:28So the immediate plan is to give her one-on-one care.

00:34So it started off very, very slow,

00:35just hand-feeding her.

00:40Making sure that she had the strength inside her,

00:43and then trying to encourage her to move around,

00:48get those muscles going.

00:52And so it's really about her personality coming out

00:55just as important as the physical side of it

00:58and the health side of it.

01:03We started taking her out into the jungle

01:05so she can start to learn to climb

01:07and develop that agility into the trees.

01:11And then you start to see

01:13this beautiful personality coming out.

01:16And she was a very gentle, tender monkey.

01:20So it took us about six months

01:22to get her back to health

01:25in order to get her into a position

01:27where we could actually introduce her

01:28into other individuals of her own species.

01:33We had another couple of monkeys,

01:35one adult female called Carminha,

01:37and another young female,

01:39about Occle's age, called Leo.

01:42And Carminha was a really great surrogate mother for her.

01:51As her confidence grew,

01:53her playfulness grew.

01:56And then we introduced her and Leo

01:59to a group of boys in order to form a group for release.

02:05So we had all of them in together for quite a few months.

02:08They could form a bond.

02:11Because the most important part is once they're released,

02:13they need to use each other for support.

02:16The day finally came for release.

02:18We did a soft release on them.

02:19So we helped them by supplementing their food

02:22so they can get used to their surrounding area.

02:25And they don't have to really rely

02:26on the jungle straight away.

02:29They did amazing.

02:30They really did.

02:31They surpassed all of our expectations.

02:37It became really evident

02:38that they didn't need so much of our help.

02:40So we were able to get them out of the jungle

02:42It became really evident

02:43that they didn't need so much of our help.

02:45So we just kind of left them to it

02:47and we would sporadically go off and check.

02:53And then one day came

02:55that we found them with a wild group.

02:57They were interacting with a wild group,

02:59which was like an incredibly emotional moment

03:02for the whole team.

03:04To get from Ojo coming in at such a tiny, frail stage

03:07To get from Ojo coming in at such a tiny, frail stage

03:12and seeing her out in the jungle

03:14interacting with wild groups of woolly monkeys

03:17is just incredible.

03:20It's amazing to see her now up in the trees.

03:22It's just such a special moment for us.

03:34It's just such a special moment for us.

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