Monitoring Desk
TOKYO: Japanese zookeepers believe they have solved the secret of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage.
Momo, a twelve-year-old white-handed gibbon, surprised her Kujukushima Zoo keepers and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no apparent male companionship.
Now 2 years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has found out who the father is. The keepers also have a theory now that the gibbons mated.
The test showed the father is Ito, a thirty-four-year-old agile gibbon, who was in a closer cage to Momo around the time she became pregnant.
Gibbon managed to mate
The zoo officials believed that Momo and Ito had managed to mate through a small hole in a steel plate between their cages. The hole measured about nine millimeters (0.3 inch) in diameter.
The baby ape, who is yet to be named, now weighs around two kilograms and is growing healthily, the zoo said.
Gibbons are among the smallest apes with loud singing voices, and can swing from branch to branch at speeds of up to thirty-five miles per hour.
