A pair of mandrill baby monkeys recently born at the Los Angeles Zoo will make their public debut Tuesday.
A female baby was born on Aug. 3 to 5-year-old mother, Juliette, and a male baby was born on Aug. 17 to 4-year-old mother, Clementine.
The first-time mothers were brought to the zoo from Parc Zoologique de La Palmyre in Les Mathes in southwestern France in April 2016 to be paired with the first-time father, 6-year-old Jabari, as part of a species survival program.
"This is a very new breeding group of mandrills that has only been together for about a year, so we're incredibly happy with how well things are going so far," said L'Oreal Dunn, an animal keeper at the zoo. "This species comes from a small area in Africa that isn't accessible to most people, so it's very special that our guests can now observe babies here for the first time in over 40 years."
Mandrils, which resemble baboons, come mostly from southern Cameroon and the Congo, but there could concentrations in areas not yet identified. They are regarded as vulnerable.
