The Marmoset Care Centre whose goal is to educate is becoming `THE WORLD PRIMATE SANCTUARY` due to the varied exotic monkeys being placed in South Africa. We hope that this website will enable people to take good care of their monkeys by providing them with a suitable environment, understanding their behaviour and giving them the best nutrition and health care possible. After all, it was man that took them out of their natural habitat!

One focus of `THE WORLD PRIMATE SANCTUARY` is to promote the correct way of handling and caring for your monkey / Marmoset, because everybody has different ideas with regards to the best nutrition and care for marmosets.

Here are some helpful tips:

1. Monkeys need to be kept under eyes, as they can run away and disappear when allowed to run around freely.
Lost marmosets could face starving to death, being stepped on or eaten by predators.
2. It is best to keep your monkey in a good size cage. It should have lots of interesting toys and enrichments like hammocks, branches, logs, mirrors, ropes, baskets, planks, swings and non-toxic plants.
3. There shouldn't be sharp objects in the cage, and the cage should be hosed down and disinfect once or twice a month in winter and every second week in summer. Cages should be cleaned thoroughly with a product called F10.
4.When taking your monkey / Marmoset out of the cage, please ensure that it has a harness around its waist.
5.Use a transport cage when taking your monkey to the vet.
6.The best and least stressful technique is to use a portable cage inside the big cage, if you want to catch your monkey.
7. When luring your monkey into his cage, put some of his/her favourites, like mealworms in the cage, next to the clean blanket. There will be some kicking and screaming, but have the door open for you to put him/her into the transport cage.
This can be quite stressful but I tend to believe it is slightly less stressful than using a net.
8. Be cautious whan putting more than one female with a male, the dominant female will reproduce, but on the other hand the females could fight.
It is better to have more than one male in a cage with a female, because the males most often than not would't fight.

For more information on caring for your monkey, read Wendy Macleod's book on "General Primate Care". It focusses mainly on exotic primates and includes medicinal, nutritional, behavioural and other information, that can be applied to all non-human primates such as monkeys.

If you know of a monkey suffering or being held under cruel circumstances, please contact The Marmoset Care Centre or the SPCA .