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[Tim Gibbons <gibbons AT cinesite.com>]

Reluctant suitor produces rare heir

Lincoln Park Zoo gaga over gibbon
By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter

October 5, 2001

Three years ago Lincoln Park Zoo staffers knew there was a problem
when Caruso, their very rare white-cheeked male gibbon, would mistake
amorous solicitations from his comely consort, Burma, for an
invitation to play leapfrog.

Such behavior would not do, considering there are only 32 pairs of
white-cheeked gibbons in North American zoos and fewer than 10,000
left in the wilds of Vietnam, Laos and China. It was extremely
important to the zoo world that Caruso and Burma start having babies.

So the entire staff of the zoo's primate house became the gibbon
equivalents of human sex researchers.

On Thursday their efforts seemed to pay off as they introduced Kien
Nahn, the baby of still indeterminate sex born to Burma Sept. 2.

"It is almost impossible to express our delight in this extremely
important birth," said Kristen Lukas, the zoo's primate curator.

Just six months ago, she was so certain the zoo's efforts had failed
miserably that she wrote a scholarly paper on "how we failed to
reproduce gibbons." It was accepted for publication.

The problem was that Caruso, born in a German zoo in 1990 and reared
by humans, didn't seem to have a clue about gibbon love rituals.

The handsome, jet-black creature with striking white cheeks has been
a public favorite since coming here in 1993. An unrestrained
exhibitionist, he often presses himself to the glass of his habitat
to get attention from the big crowds that gather.

In 1994, the zoo acquired buff-colored Burma from the National Zoo in
Washington, D.C., where she was born in 1988 and raised by her
parents.
Though the two proved companionable, Caruso rarely showed interest
when Burma was in a seductive mood. And even when he did, Caruso has
been known to walk away from the most passionate of moments to greet
human visitors at his window, Lukas said.

In November 1998, Lukas and the primate house crew began monitoring
Burma daily to map her reproductive cycles. Once they had a good idea
of when she was in estrus each month, they began experimenting with
creating the right environment to induce Caruso to mate.

"In May, we had given up, and we decided to trade Caruso for another
male in the Cincinnati Zoo," Lukas said. "We were giving him a
physical in preparation for the shipment when, almost as an
afterthought, we decided to give Burma a physical, too."

Lo and behold, Burma was in the second trimester of her pregnancy.
The keepers aptly named the baby Kien Nahn, which means "patience" in
Vietnamese.

Though proud of the keepers' efforts to encourage mating, Lukas said
she isn't sure if they did anything right at all.

"It could be that these two animals just finally matured, and we had
nothing to do with this pregnancy," she said. "We may have spent
three years dancing on our own heads, accomplishing nothing."

Nonetheless, she is busily rewriting her "failure" paper for upcoming
publication in the journal Zoo Biology.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/tribwest/chi-0110050313oct05.story?coll=chi-newslocaltribwest-hed
 

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"What if the hokey pokey is REALLY what it's all about?"