Zoo Figures Out How Gibbon Who Lived Alone Gave Birth – IOTW Report

Zoo Figures Out How Gibbon Who Lived Alone Gave Birth

When There is a Will…

newser-

It was a head-scratching birth. Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, lived alone in a cage at a Japanese zoo—and delivered a shock when she delivered a baby in February 2021. As Vice reports, zookeepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki couldn’t figure out how Momo could have mated with one of her male neighbors, since “two layers of barriers”—bars and chicken wire—separated them. Two years later, the zoo thinks it has figured out the mysterious birth, and it took a DNA test for it to get there.

That DNA testing—of hair and stool samples from Momo, her still-unnamed baby, and four possible fathers—revealed Momo somehow mated with Itoh, a 34-year-old agile gibbon who occupied an adjacent enclosure. As for the “how” in that somehow, the zoo has a theory: It tells CNN it believes the mating occurred via a 0.3-inch hole in a steel plate between their enclosures.

more

18 Comments on Zoo Figures Out How Gibbon Who Lived Alone Gave Birth

  1. CJ
    FEBRUARY 12, 2023 AT 2:44 PM
    “Itoh in Japanese is “Fauci.””

    …actually, Itoh makes roller conveyors in really clever ways, including making rollers with thr motors INSIDE.

    ht tps://www.ultimationinc.com/itoh-denki/

    …not sure how this ties to naming a horny gibbon, but he DOES seem to be very much into pushing those Production numbers up…

    1
  2. Same thing happened with our female Irish Setter. She stayed in a kennel most of the time and was with us when out. She birthed 3 Golden Retriever x Setter pups one icy winter day. Our neighbors Golden, Sully, was the only suspect. Those were some beautiful, humongous pups, ending up over 90# each.

    1

Comments are closed.