COLCHESTER ZOO has been celebrating a baby boom in the past few weeks. The new arrivals include two Red River hog piglets and two types of primates, a Squirrel Monkey and a Mandrill.

COLCHESTER ZOO has been celebrating a baby boom in the past few weeks.

The new arrivals include two Red River hog piglets and two types of primates, a Squirrel Monkey and a Mandrill.

The two piglets were born to Mathilde, one of the two female Red River Hog at the zoo.

The Red River Hog are often hunted by farmers in Africa and are also hunted for the bush meat trade.

And a baby Squirrel Monkey has also been born in the “Heart of the Amazon” area.

A spokeswoman said: “This new birth is great news for the species as their status is considered to be vulnerable in the wild due to the extreme loss of the rainforests in South America.

“The intense slash and burn-style of agriculture plus the huge amount of logging that is currently being allowed to continue is resulting in their increasingly threatened future.

“They are also captured and sold as part of the pet trade reducing their numbers in the wild and crucially reducing the quality of the gene pool in squirrel monkeys that is left in the wild.”

The zoo's breeding group of Mandrills, the largest in the country, also got one bigger with the birth of a baby.