It’s been six years since singer George Michael passed away on Christmas Day…but his name is being used for a very special new resident on the South Coast.
George Michael and Jimi – named after Jimi Hendrix – are two Goeldi Monkeys who just arrived at Santa Barbara Zoo.
"They're pint-sized packages of personality," Kristen Wieners, the Zoological Manager at Santa Barbara Zoo, told KCLU.
"Their hair definitely matches their rock-star vibe," she added. "They have the best head of hair of any animal I've pretty much seen."
George, 3, and Jimi, 2, are brothers and have joined the zoo's White-face Saki monkeys in their habitat.
In the wild, they can be found in areas of the Amazon rainforest across southern Colombia, eastern Ecuador and Peru, western Brazil and northern Bolivia. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists Goeldi's monkeys as 'vulnerable'.
By the way, George Michael’s sixth solo Billboard number one hit was a song called Monkey, back in 1988.
