Red-handed Tamarin Facts

Red-handed Tamarin Profile

There’s some irony to be appreciated in an animal whose common name means “without a doubt”; there is so much confusion around what colour its hands are.

But the red-handed tamarin, also known as the golden-handed tamarin, is a lot of money in a very small package!

Red-handed Tamarin Facts Overview

Red-handed tamarins are cheeky monkeys. They’re tiny, speedy, agile and tough, and they’ll eat anything, anywhere – as long as there are tropical canopies to live in. These feisty little animals have a stark contrast in the colour between their black bodies and lighter hands, and the hands remain a bit of a mystery. Are they red, or are they gold? And why are they this colour to begin with?

Spoiler: we’re not about to answer these questions because we don’t know either. But what we do know is that this adaptable little acrobat is doing very well for itself in a world where so many arboreal species are struggling.  

Interesting Red-handed Tamarin Facts

[1] Their hands are gold

Red-handed Tamarins are funny-looking monkeys with distinctive hands, but the colour of these hands seems to be a matter of contention. Their species name, S. midas, clearly refers to the idea that they’re golden, and their other common name, the golden-handed tamarin, hints at this, too.

This mixed-messaging arises a bit because the hand colour shows some variance, and can be a light, golden brown, through darker tones, all the way to a deep, rusty-orange, arguably “red”, or close enough.

These are members of the Callitrichidae family of monkeys, all of which live in the New World, and most of which are some of the smallest monkeys on the planet. This family was once thought to be the closest to the ancestral monkeys, and a precursor to all the larger primates found in the Americas. Today, though, it’s thought they’re just a bunch of dwarves.  

Tamarins, inside this family, are some of the dinkiest of the lot, and red-handed tamarins are no exception here.

[2] They’re tiny

This monkey is only around 30cm long in total, perhaps up to 44 cm on a good day, with tail included. They are squirrel-sized lightweights, topping out at half a kilo, and so are phenomenal acrobats in ways that heavier arboreal mammals just can’t compete with.

This small stature also makes them adorable, but also helps them when landing on surfaces from great heights.

[3] They leap

This monkey is an expert jumper, and not only does it traverse the canopy with ease, but it’s said to be able to jump out of trees from 20 metres up, landing on the ground like a cat, without any harm.

It has hands that appear to be less specialised at first glance, but this, as it happens, is a special adaptation to their lifestyles.  

[4] Despite being thumbless

Tamarin hands differ tremendously from those of most primates. First, they have no saddle joint in the thumb. This means their thumbs aren’t opposable or remotely as dextrous as ours are, for example. Secondly, instead of nails, as almost all primates have, they have claws. These two features are very unusual for primates, but are far from failures in the tamarin; instead, these are features that give it spectacular agility.

Being tiny, it has a lot of options when it comes to running along branches, and it does this on all fours, thanks to its weird thumbs. Then, scaling trees, the claws come in handy for grip, making up for the lack of opposable thumbs.

Strangely, and for no known purpose, they have one recognisable nail on the big toe on each foot – the rest are claws¹.

[5] They eat everything

Being small and nippy, these little monkeys can get around almost all corners of the forest. They prefer edge ecosystems, where forest meets savanna or some other biome, but in terms of diet, they are not apparently very fussy at all.

Red-handed tamarins will eat mostly fruit and insects, but will also enjoy tree sap, resins, leaves, roots, smaller mammals and eggs, if they come across any.

This diverse diet makes them adaptable to most locations, and they claim their space using scent glands.

[6] They rub their genitals on everything

And, sure, when they do it, it’s cute…

Red-handed tamarins communicate a lot of information via scent. In zoos, where captive animals are housed, part of their enrichment can be to rub fruits or other scented objects around in their enclosure, to trigger their natural behaviours of covering up those scents with their own.

They have glands on their chests and on their genitals, so when covering up markers, they can be seen sliding their groins over branches. As normal and natural as this is, it’s still very, very funny².

[7] They’re not very popular

This monkey species is listed as of Least Concern to the IUCN, which is great news! And it stems from their lack of popularity as a food item. They are hunted, but very rarely, and this allows them to venture well into human habitations and thrive in areas where other species would be wiped out.

Their little tails are sometimes used in ornaments, but this weird habit doesn’t appear to have a significant market, and their populations overall are considered stable.

There are no major threats to this species. They are rarely hunted, but are a least-preferred food species. Their tails are used for ornamentations, but otherwise, it is the only species usually found in the immediate vicinity of villages where there is hunting³.

Red-handed Tamarin Fact-File Summary

Scientific Classification

1. Jenifer (2021), “RED-HANDED TAMARIN”, New England Primitive Conservancy.
2. Emily (2000), “Saguinus midas”, Animal Diversity Web.
3. Mittermeier (2021), “Golden-handed Tamarin”, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021.