The officers working at the Dai Nam Zoo these days are very busy taking care of a baby monkey which was born just nearly one month ago and the F2 Indochina tigers.
The unexpected descendants
One day, forest rangers discovered a smuggling case and found six silver monkeys, which were then carried to the Dai Nam tourism site in Binh Duong province. As such, the monkeys luckily escaped death.
The silver monkeys are now living in small houses on the top of trees. Every day, they go searching for food on an isolated island, and then return home.
“Their homeland is the limestone mountain in Kien Giang province, where mountain is being exploited to get materials to make cement,” said Mai Xuan Tinh, Deputy Director of Dai Nam Zoo said.
“One month ago, Che was born. This is the seventh member of the troop of the primates,” he added.
Duc, the officer in charge of looking after the small island, usually stands far from there, on the other side of the canal, quietly observing the monkeys.
“At first, they were shocked when they were carried here. They were obsessed by the things they experienced in captivity,” Duc recalled the day when the monkeys first appeared at the zoo.
“However, they later could pick themselves up. Now they play with each other on trees, go together to search for food and water. They have regained the wild extinct,” Duc said.
Che’s mother has a dark coat, white foot, which looks like the white hair of a person. One day, Duc discovered that her stomach was bigger, and he immediately informed the other officers at the zoo.
The information that a new baby monkey would be born at the zoo then made everyone excited. All of the officers expected the day the monkey gave birth.
“It seems that the monkey knows the secret to protect the race. It gave birth at night. I saw the monkey embracing her baby on the top of a coconut tree the next morning,” Duc said.
The first monkey born at the zoo was given the name “Che”. It is very beautiful with bright yellow coat.
Che is always embraced by its mother, who tried to hide the beautiful baby and protect the baby from the threats from outside. Meanwhile, Che’s father usually runs around to take care of the small descendant.
The lovely F2 tigers
A report released recently showed that only 50 tiger individuals still exist in the wild. Tigers live alone, they are not gregarious. Since they get isolated due to the habitat separation, scientists fear that the tigers in the wild would become extinct in 10 years.
However, two generations of tigers have been born and living well at the Dai Nam Zoo. Mai Xuan Tinh said the first tigers were born in 2008, and they have given birth to F2 tigers.
Dai Nam Zoo remains the only place in Vietnam where F2 tigers can be born and grown up.
When a tiger is three years old, it can begin reproducing if it has good conditions. As such, the number of tigers would increase rapidly.
An officer at the zoo carried a tiger which was just several months old on a bicycle, showing the tiger to the reporters with pride. “The tiger’s name is Bi. We have four F2 tigers like this.”