TROPICAL HOUSE AT THE ZOO

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 5

TROPICAL HOUSE AT THE ZOO

The tropical house has a new attraction in a trio of baby gibbon apes. The young animals arc about six months old and only a foot high, and are believed to be the smallest and youngest examples of these Asiatic apes. Two of thorn arc Silvery gibbons, and so alike are they that they might easdy be mistaken for twins. They have been nicknamed David and Jonathan, for they always sit side by side with their arms clasped round one another, and not even the offer of tempting delicacies can separate them. They are too nervous to make friends readily, but the third member of the trio is confiding and playful. Ho is a Hoolock gibbon known as Spider. Ho likes his visitors to nurse him as if he were a human baby and join in his games. He is a most engaging playmate, for he often walks upright, and will take a walk round his den hand-m----hand with any caller. The title Mother of the Zoo, which fell vacant on the death of the venerable griffon vulture, who had been in tho Gardens since 1901, now belongs to Bessie, the kinkajou. Bessie came to the Zoo in August, 1911, when she was nine years old, and is the oldest mammal in the menagerie. Bessie has always been a pet, and though she is nocturnal in her habits she has never refused to come out of her sleeping box for the benefit of callers, and will take up a comfortable position round her visitor’s neck or on his arms, where she lies quietly while she is stroked and patted. Though she is now thirty years old her temper is as sweet as ever. . , As, however, she has grown tat and rather heavy she is reluctant to peiform the kihkajou’s great trick of hanging upside down by the tail and then climbing up it to a more normal position. . , . , , , She is of particular interest to regular Zoo visitors, for as she has been a pet for 21 years there are many people who enjoy taking their children to sec tho kinkajou they used to play with when they themselves were children.