Hello! Please note that we update this site every month with new findings, pictures, lab happenings, so keep tuned in and check often.

​

This is our 27th and final year of working with the cotton top tamarins that Julie Neiworth was given as a generous donation from U-Wisconsin-Madison. Julie worked for a year before delivery, writing up plans and obtaining permission for housing a total of 8 monkeys at Carleton in 1998. We ended up accepting other couples as time went on, and took in a total of 5 tamarins from a lab that was closing in 2015. In all, we studied and cared for 32 monkeys over a 27-year period, but the last elderly monkey, Oriole, our Queen, died in late June, 2024. Our guiding principle was to accept pair-bonded monkey couples and families, and to always house them socially. We maintained a "sanctuary" atmosphere, pledging to keep the monkeys "wild" and not tamed with human contact. This allowed us to study their natural social behavior, and to pose cognitive problems for them to solve with their voluntary participation.

We are still compiling data on the tamarins' cognitive and perceptual abilities, and will be posting archival video footage and new publications here, as well as our work to donate important support/supplies to primate sanctuaries (shout out to Alveus Sanctuary and Oregon Primate Rescue)!

       We cared for and worked with:

​

• 32 monkeys that have spanned over three generations

• About 166 undergraduate collaborators to date 

• Five NIH grants, totaling $1.7 million dollars and

• More than 2 dozen publications and presentations