The cotton-top tamarin is a a tiny monkey that only lives naturally in the forests of Colombia, and is critically endangered due to deforestation, poaching and wildlife trafficking.

In 2020 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recorded that less than 6000 of the tamarins were left in the wild, with just 2000 mature individuals. It's now believed there could be less than 3000.

The youngest of the tamarins was born to mother Cali and father Mateo. While Mateo lived in Altina, Cali was imported into Australia as part of a breeding program to help the species recover.

Operations manager Rebecca Surian said that the new genetics would go a long way to helping Australia's conservation efforts.

"It's always exciting when we have new babies, and the mother is an import, the fact that she's bred for us really helps," she said.

"They were imported for a reason - it makes it that much more exciting."

She said that when the newborn matures, there was a good chance she would be transferred to another facility in order to increase the genetic diversity across the breeding programs.

"There's a high chance she'll go to another facility to breed and that will help the conservation program in Australia, that will hopefully delay the bottleneck that comes."

The young tamarin is currently unnamed, with the opportunity to name her going out to the public soon for a nominal fee that will go back towards conservation efforts.

Ms Surian gave a few tips for anyone interesting in naming the tiny creature.

"She's quite shy, but very beautiful. The area they're from speaks a lot of Spanish so that would be nice, but we'll see what is suggested."