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  • From: Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [monkeywire] New mother gibbon scared of infant
  • Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 14:22:41 -0400

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/8553640.htm? template=contentModules/printstory.jsp (free subscription required)

Posted on Fri, Apr. 30, 2004

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Baby's mom not gibbon him love

Newborn ape settles for bottle feedings

BY LAURA YUEN
Pioneer Press

Let's be honest. Babies can be scary. When Tia, a white-cheeked gibbon, gave birth to a baby two weeks ago, she couldn't warm up to the idea of being a mom. Zookeepers encouraged her to take a liking to the baby boy, but she was terrified.

"Her reaction was alarm: 'What is this thing?' " said Christine McKnight, the tropics keeper at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley. "She ran in the opposite direction."

So the little guy, still unnamed, has been living in an incubator in a zoo office. There, he clings to a surrogate mom: a furry, long-armed stuffed animal. McKnight and others bottle-feed him baby formula six times a day.

Ideally, he should be raised by both parents so he can learn to socialize — and eventually, how to mate, McKnight said.

"We know we are his source of food, but we don't want him to think of us as moms totally," she said. "We want him to think of himself as a gibbon."

Mating is essential for the endangered small primate apes, which, in their natural habitat, climb and swing from trees in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. About 14,000 of their kind exist in the wild. The Minnesota newborn is the ninth gibbon born at the zoo.

Gibbons are not to be confused with monkeys or orangutans.

Tia's reluctance to embrace motherhood isn't especially surprising to zookeepers because she's a first-time mom and the youngest in her family. She never witnessed her own mother cradling or nursing her young, and that makes her more likely to reject her baby.

The zookeepers have tried to induce some motherly affection by sedating her with anesthesia. As she dozed, they placed the baby on her stomach.

But when she awoke, she tried to pry him off her. The baby mightily hung on, slipping onto her back.

His father, Bailey, also shows no interest in the infant.

  • [monkeywire] New mother gibbon scared of infant, Josh Greenman, 05/03/2004

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