Cefn Yr Erw gibbon house

I would imagine the gibbon would have had to be hand-raised, to behave that way with people - particularly strangers.

I've no doubt it does act as a good enrichment for the gibbon and other animals that people are able to interact with.... I just get very nervous whenever I hear about people being able to handle adult wild animals when they have no experience with the species.

"Keeper for a day" programs are a great awareness and money raising scheme for any institution. But, I just fail to see why it's necessary for people to actually handle the animals as part of this. Fair enough if keepers handle the gibbon/ mandrill etc, if the animal actually needs it, but they have a personal relationship with the animal so there's far less risk involved.

I see they let them feed the lemurs maltesers?

They look like Nuts or Dog treats to me, may be wrong though....

Sorry, was looking at the pictures on flickr. The 'keeper fro the day' seems to be holding some maltesers or something.

on the cefn yr erw website there are pics of people feeding the gibbons pizza

'Vo' is a male White-handed Gibbon , at least 40 years old , who has been in quite a few collections over the years , arrived at Cefn-yr-Erw from Southport .

'Oliver' was born in Guernsey in 1986 , arrived at Penscynor in 1989 and was later transferred to Cefn-yr-Erw with his mate , who I think has since died .

They are the Sanctuary Patrons.

Surely pizza isn't a good thing for a gibbon to eat no matter who it comes from?


(mind you, it's not generally very good for humans either, and that doesn't stop us, so maybe that's a weak argument! )

I was shocked at that Flickr gallery and the terrible treatment of the Cefn-yr-Erw chimps. Maltesers and pizza is one thing, but they're actually letting them drink tea out of plastic pop bottles.

What on earth happened to maintaining standards? Surely chimps are supposed to drink tea out of china cups? And while we're at it, why can't they have a small bicycle for further enrichment?

You have to wonder how many the lemurs actually got.