It's attached to the original nursery outdoor enclosure, which is on the right of this photo. This window overlooks the large picnic area near the entrance to the Malagasy wood.
Monkey World has experience in hand rearing and re-introducing various apes and monkeys. In the orangutan nursery currently are two of their own youngsters who were rejected and had to be hand reared, Hsiao-Ning and Dinda, Joly who came from Moscow and Lingga from Paris. Aris, from Basel was there but sadly died when he was introduced to one of the adult orang groups. They are assisted by 22 year old orangutan, A-Mei, who also lives in the nursery and acts as foster mother. It's the equivalent of the gorilla nursery in Stuttgart.
Most expensive looking building at Monkeyworld . Maybe the EEP paid for it, or contributed a major share of the cost?
Five youngster is quite a lot, thaks for your answer. I asked because there were only 2 hand-reared orangs in Czech zoos in the last 20 years or so. btw, both of them (Dahi born 1998 in Dvur Kralove and Filip born 2000 in Hodonin) were successfully re-united with their mothers when 7-8 months old, after they learned to climb and come to bars for bottle-feeding when called. It took a lot of the keeper´s time during these 7-8 months to allow them an almost 24hours contact with a mother (through bars or glass), but both grew into "100% orangs" at the end.
If I remember correctly, there was a sign by the worksite last year saying that a benefactor had paid for the new house.
Congratulations to the keepers! I suppose that as hand rearing is so time-consuming, there is an advantage to having a central nursery for doing it, though the outcome is that the infants won't be re-united with their own mothers.
Its a good building, plenty of climbing opportunities, sadly its positioned in a place where the sun glares on the windows most of the time which is a big let down. From the looks of it, the little ones prefer being inside rather than outside now due to the new house.
