You might be wondering what this is... and I wouldn't blame you!
When we arrived at ZFL, over 6 years ago now, amongst the troupe of samango monkeys (aka blue monkeys, aka sykes monkeys) there was one female with a distinctly short tail: samango monkeys have VERY long tails but hers was probably only a third of what it should be.
We could discern no scar tissue around it but we had no idea if she had been born this way or if she had had an encounter with something and lived. She became Short Tail and her troupe is known as Short Tail's troupe. She seems to be absolutely fine with her shorter tail and we actually think she might be the alpha female.
She has had plenty of young and seems to look after other young as well.
The Short Tail troupe have been pretty much resident around ZFL and a constant source of delight. They are very shy and rarely venture onto the ground (they know the hounds are lurking!) but don't seem to mind our presence and will come and feed from the trees around the lodge, so imagine our delight when a couple of weeks ago Tom called me out to see a baby Short Tail??!!!
Oh so unbelievably cute! It was jumping around with its third of a tail - so we guess it might be genetic after all.
We need someone with one of those mega cameras to come and photograph it's cuteness :)