Animal profile

Golden Lion Tamarin

Leontopithecus rosalia

MammaliaLowland Atlantic coastal rainforestEndangered

Field profile

The golden lion tamarin is a small, brilliantly orange callitrichid with a mane framing a dark bare face. It forages in family groups for fruit, gums and insects, prising prey from bromeliads and bark crevices with long, narrow fingers. Its entire wild range is a scatter of forest fragments north of Rio de Janeiro.

Published field notes

2026-05-31

Golden Lion Tamarin

This tamarin recovered from about two hundred animals

By the early 1970s fewer than roughly two hundred golden lion tamarins were thought to remain in the wild. A combination of captive breeding, reintroduction and forest corridor planting has since raised the wild population above two thousand, though it remains confined to fragments.

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