Here, every year is the year of the monkey.

The Chinese Year of the Rooster begins on Wednesday, ushering the Year of the Monkey into mothballs for another dozen years, but I can't get exercised about roosters unless they're wearing boxing gloves and sensor vests, so I'm sticking with the monkeys. And where better to start than my favorite specialty blog, Monkeys in the News, which has a story of four people being arrested in Britain for the theft of three endangered Cotton-Top Tamarin monkeys. However, it isn't interesting so much for the story as for the accompanying picture.

Do those things look like Photoshop fakes or what? I had to know more because, well, I'm like that about monkeys. The tiny monkeys (seven to twelve inches tall at adulthood, with an extra 12-17 inches of tail) hail by the odd Latin name Saguinas Oedipus and are one of the most endangered primates in the world. Only two to three thousand remain in the wild, and deforestation has shrunk their range to just the northwest corner of Colombia. They generally form monogamous pairs and usually give birth to twins. Family groups of about a dozen members are common and child-rearing is shared among parents and siblings.

Oddly enough, Cotton-Top Tamarins are the only primate other than humans that spontaneously develops colon cancer, making them valuable for research into the disease. They have over thirty vocalizations (mp3 file), and each individual has his or her own unique hairdo. I like monkeys.