Momo, a 12-year-old female gibbon, shocked zoo staff in February 2021 by giving birth to a baby despite not living with a male.
Two years later, Momo’s baby has undergone DNA analysis, and the zoo staff have found out who the offspring’s father is, even putting forward a theory about how the two animals mated.
Analyzes revealed that the father of the baby is the 34-year-old agile gibbon Ito, who lived in the cage next to Momo around the time of the pregnancy.
The zoo told CNN on Friday that they believe Momo and Ito managed to mate through a small hole in the steel plate between the two enclosures. The diameter of the hole was about 9 millimeters.
The little monkey, who has not yet been given a name, currently weighs about 2 kilograms and continues to develop healthily. “This is a precious life born into the world, and we will continue to care for him and hope he lives a healthy, long life,” said Hideki Hisano, the zoo’s deputy director.
Gibbons are known to be among the smallest apes, but they have exceptionally loud voices and can swing from branch to branch at speeds of up to 56 kilometers per hour. Agile gibbons are in decline in the wild and are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to human activities such as deforestation, mining and road construction threatening their habitat.
