A gibbon who lived alone in her cage had a baby. Japanese zookeepers finally know how

NAGASAKI, Feb 11 (ctvnews.ca) - Japanese zookeepers believe they have solved the mystery of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage.

Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no male companionship.

Now two years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has worked out who the father is -- and even has a theory about how the gibbons mated.

The test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure to Momo around the time she became pregnant.

The zoo told CNN on Friday it believed that Momo and Itō had managed to mate through a small hole in a steel plate between their enclosures. The hole measured about 9 millimetres in diameter.

The baby ape -- who is yet to be named -- now weighs around 2 kilograms and is "growing healthily" under Momo's loving attention, the zoo said. ...continue reading

Source: 日テレNEWS

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