Who is Tiana?
Tiana is a baby ring-tailed lemur born at the Cali Zoo in Colombia. Shortly after birth, she was rejected by her mother — a situation that happens sometimes with first-time lemur mothers, but one that leaves a newborn unable to survive on her own.
She weighed just 70 grams at birth. The zoo's keepers stepped in immediately, and she's now being hand-raised around the clock: bottle-fed every two hours, and even groomed with small brushes to mimic the grooming she'd normally get from her mother. She's since grown to around 88 grams.
To keep her calm and comforted, keepers gave her a plush toy monkey to cling to — and it's become her constant companion in every photo. That image, of a fragile newborn lemur wrapped around a fuzzy stuffed animal, is what caught the internet's attention and started spreading online.
$TIANA was created by the community around that story — not to profit off her, but to help spread awareness and channel support toward the people looking after her.