No one has been able to figure out how two monkeys managed to have a baby despite being in completely different enclosures. Now zookeepers think they’ve finally got to the bottom of it
Zookeepers reckon they’ve finally solved the mystery of a monkey that got pregnant despite living on its own.
Momo the gibbon, 12, has been making zookeepers in Japan scratch their heads for the last two years, having been living by herself and never having a companion.
Although some of the white-handed gibbon’s neighbours are male, their cages have big bars with chicken wire in between.
Regardless, she gave birth to a black white-handed gibbon in 2021 and zookeepers have been unable to work out how for the last two years.
But finally, after around 24 months of wondering, zookeepers in Nagasaki have finally worked it out using a DNA test.
They got a researcher in to analyse Momo’s poo to work out the DNA involved.
They also took from four prime candidates that could have been the dad, finally landing on a conclusion.
The proud father is in fact 34-year-old agile gibbon Itoh.
Speaking to Vice World News, zoo superintendent Jun Yamano said: “It took us two years to figure it out because we couldn’t get close enough to collect samples—she was very protective of her child”.
Yamano reckons that the point of contact is a hole in the wall, nine millimetres in diameter, but they have no hard evidence of this.
Yamano added: “We think it’s very likely that on one of the days that Itoh was in the exhibition space, they copulated through a hole”.
The zoo now hopes that Momo and Itoh will be able to move in together.
“They have to get used to each other first. But hopefully they live together as one family”.
