Today Fota Wildlife Park announced the arrival of a new baby Agile gibbon (Hylobates agilis) to mother Chloe who is aged 18 and dad Conor, 28 years of age. As yet the Rangers do not know the gender of the new arrival as mother Chloe is keeping the baby very close.
Lead Ranger Teresa Power said “We are delighted to announce the birth of this new agile gibbon. This species is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which makes their breeding success in Fota all the more important. The group of Agile gibbons here at Fota have been established since the 1990s and Fota is one of the few wildlife parks worldwide to successfully breed this species in captivity.” She continued, “New mother Chloe arrived here in 2008 and has since bred successfully with Conor, their daughter Billie - older sister to the new baby, left for Parc Safari in Montreal last year and we hope that she will be as successful a breeder as her parents.”
As the name suggests this gibbon is extremely fast, agile and acrobatic and is native to the rainforests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The Agile gibbon is also known as the Black-handed gibbon. The male is distinguishable from his female counterpart by the white or light-grey cheek fur on his face; both have white eyebrows and, like other Gibbons, don’t have tails.
The Agile gibbon family lives in a specially constructed island habitat in the Asian Sanctuary at Fota. The Asian Sanctuary is also home to other endangered and critically endangered species such as the Asiatic lion, the Indian rhino and the Sumatran tiger to name a few.
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