The nine tamarins—six females and two males, along with a baby of undetermined gender—arrived at the zoo on May 22. Medical records show they had traveled by van for 50 hours, though minutes from a later staff debriefing say the travel time was 58 hours.



Keeper reports say the monkeys appeared healthy, although "very excited and skittish." They were placed in quarantine for observation, a standard practice.



But on 3 pm May 24, veterinary technician Margot Monti found six tamarins—five females and one male—dead inside the plastic coolers the zoo had provided as nesting boxes.



"I could see one of the animals' heads sticking out of the entrance," Monti writes, "but it was not moving so I gently shook the box. When there was still no reaction, I touched the top of the animal's head with gloved hand and found it to be stiff and cold."



In pathology reports on the dead animals, veterinarian Michael Garner says the monkeys' condition was "consistent with acute systemic shock" and suggested travel stress as a likely but not proven cause. (Garner wrote the reports since the zoo's chief veterinarian, Mitch Finnegan, was fired early last month after the death of Sumatrian orangutan Kutai.)



But Garner also kept open the possibility that the tamarins died from heat stroke or breathing in toxins.



Veterinary staff, who have been defending themselves against Metro's charges of "sloppy" procedures in the final surgeries on Kutai, cast aspersions on the primate keepers—especially Jennifer Davis, the zoo's curator of primates and Africa exhibits.



Monti, the veterinary technician, added to her report on May 27 that Davis had done nothing to help the surviving three tamarins, and that Davis declined to call the donor of the animals because "I'm afraid I might cry."



Meetings in the days after the tamarins' deaths focused on whether zoo curators should have allowed the shipment of the monkeys by van.



Minutes from a May 28 meeting show deputy zoo director Chris Pfefferkorn questioned that method of transport.



Davis explained that the monkeys' donor "insisted the tamarins be driven as they had done this successfully four times before. They had successfully transported tamarins to the Oakland Zoo previously by driving the animals from Massachusetts."

