NURSERY DAYS AT THE ZOO

Evening Star, Issue 22026, 11 May 1935, Page 5

NURSERY DAYS AT THE ZOO

No. human mother and child could he given much more care and attention than Booboo, the Zoo chimpanzee, and her daughter Jubilee have received. To avoid all risk of irritation through noise the public have been kept away from the ape and her baby, a keeper lias acted as nurse by night as well as by day, all kinds of delicacies have been provided to tempt the mother’s appetite, and she has even been given a rubber mattress in place of straw. The mattress was thought advisable instead of straw bedding because Booboo would insist on using pieces of straw to clean Jubilee’s eyes and ears. This practice was due to the fact that it lias long been Booboo’s habit to manicure the nails of her visitors with a piece of straw: and ’as the Zoo considers she should have something with which to keep the baby’s eyes clean she is now being given cot-ton-wool. i

The first mattress given to her as a bed had a short life; for Booboo promptly tore it, but afterwards she was given a mattress specially covered with extra strong twill. During the first few days after Jubilee’s arrival Booboo’s appetite was not hearty enough; so to encourage her to feed she was offered an array of peaches, apricots, pears, grapefruit,

melons, cucumbers, dates, stewed apples, and rice and prunes in addition to her usual rations of fresh, seasonable fruit and vegetables. Booboo enjoyed the rice pudding and stewed apples, but from her supply or expensive fruit she just selected a poach and refused to get at all excited over the ether delicacies. Later, when her keeper began to cat his lunch in her presence, she noticed that ho had a tomato and asked for it. He at once gave it to her, and she ate it with so much appreciation that a messenger was sent out to buy a pound of tomatoes for her. These she ate in preference to the hothouse fruit. Now the youngster is usually to be found hanging on to Booboo with hands and feet; but during the first few days Booboo frequently left Jubilee lying on her bed. The baby at these tunes amused herself by kicking and waving her arms about, but being rather fretful Jubilee did not care' to be left long in this position, and she cried. These cries always met with immediate response from Booboo. The mother animal’s habit of leaving her baby for a few minutes suggests that chimpanzees make a nursery either up a tree or on the ground for their newly-born babies, and rest for a day or two before moving on to another place. Fortunately Booboo is being a model mother, and no matter how fretful and exacting her daughter happens to be she never appears to be irritated. Her attitude toward her keepers is as friendly as it was before the baby § birth, and far from trying to hide Jubilee from them she even allows them to pick her up in their arms. The father of Jubilee is an ape called Koko, who used to live in the Bristol Zoo. In the Bristol Zoo he has another daughter, wdio was the first baby chimpanzee to be born in this country: and as soon as the news of Jubilee’s birth reached Bristol a telepram of congratulation _ was sent addressed to Booboo nnd signed with the niinio of the Bristol mother ape.