Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Vintage Brookfield Zoo


This photo taken April 2, 1955 is captioned on the back "Rare Monkey at the Brookfield Zoo". It being black and white it is hard to tell, but is this possibly an albino, or some other color phase of a Spider Monkey? It looks to "light" to be a Cinnamon.

3 comments:

Jim A said...

I'd vote for albino spider monkey. Even if it was a light color phase it would have darker eyes.

Wade G. Burck said...

Jim,
That's what I assumed also or possibly a cremello. It seems such an oddity(or are/were them more common than I think) that more wasn't mentioned about the monkey, unless something happened to him quickly, and he was forgotten.

Wade

Jim A. said...

I grew up in the Chicago area and would get to Brookfield at least a couple times a year and I don't recall this monkey. Lincoln Park had an albino rhesus macaque about this time. Later I heard it may have a respiratory problem. You'd think the two zoos would have had a PR battle of the albino monkeys.