Japanese zookeepers lastly understand how Momo the gibbon who lived alone had a child

CNN
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Japanese zookeepers consider they’ve solved the thriller of how a gibbon turned pregnant regardless of dwelling alone in her cage.

Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers on the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave delivery regardless of having no identified male companionship.

Now two years later, following a DNA take a look at on her child, the zoo has labored out who the daddy is – and even has a principle about how the gibbons mated.

The take a look at confirmed the daddy to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjoining enclosure to Momo across the time she turned pregnant.

The zoo informed CNN on Friday it believed that Momo and Itō had managed to mate by means of a small gap in a metal plate between their enclosures. The gap measured about 9 millimeters (0.3 inch) in diameter.

The child ape – who’s but to be named – now weighs round 2 kilograms (4.4 kilos) and is “growing healthily” underneath Momo’s loving consideration, the zoo stated.

“It is a precious life born into the world, we will continue to take good care of him and hope that he will live a healthy long life,” stated Hideki Hisano, deputy director of the zoo.

Gibbons are among the many smallest apes, however they’ve loud singing voices which have developed into an elaborate language, and can swing from department to department at speeds of as much as 35 miles per hour.

There are dozens of gibbon species which are native to components of Asia, starting from northeastern India to China and all the best way to the Borneo archipelago.

The inhabitants of agile gibbons within the wild has been lowering and so they have been listed as an endangered species within the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as a result of their habitat is threatened by human actions resembling deforestation, mining and highway development.