Last year on March 26, Denver Zoo visitors had their first opportunity to meet Kanani, a baby De Brazza’s monkey born on Dec. 19, 2009. By March she was exploring the spaces in her corner of the Zoo’s Primate Panorama. It is unknown how many of the monkeys live in the wild as they are expert at eluding detection, The Post reported in a story about the baby’s first appearance. (Denver Post video)

In other Denver Zoo baby news, 2010 marked the hatching of baby Komodo dragons, making Denver’s the only North American zoo to succeed in breeding the endangered giant lizards on three occasions. Komodo dragons live on Indonesian islands, and fully grown, can exceed 10 feet in length and weigh in at over 250 pounds.

Masks, puppets and tweezers, oh my! These are some of the tools Denver Zoo staff used in 2007 to help a cinereous vulture chick that ran into trouble trying escape its shell. After months of careful work feeding the chick with a puppet that helped to prevent the bird from bonding to humans, the chick was healthy and on the road to rejoining the rest of its kind. (Photo by David Parsons, Provided by The Denver Zoo)

More monkeys at the Zoo: Kanani’s little brother, Kanoa, was born Nov. 27, 2010, and debuted Dec. 30. The Zoo told The Denver Post in December that Kanoa was already climbing around his habitat and was “very independent and precocious despite his mother’s early attempts to be protective.”