Langur Birth
'Elke', the young Francois Langur baby which has been hand-reared by dedicated zoo keepers is thriving at Taronga Zoo and has begun to explore the outside world.
At two and a half months of age, the young leaf-eating monkey has graduated from the nursery and started to take her first steps out into the tropical rainforest Francois Langur exhibit for short periods throughout the day.
Senior primate keeper and one of Elke's surrogate mothers, Louise Grossfeldt, said: "This is a significant step in her development. She is very inquisitive and loves to explore and is full of energy and very active."
During her outside forays she is accompanied by an ever watchful keeper as well as hot water bottles to keep her warm as the cooler weather approaches and like all newborns, her favourite teddy bear remains close by.
"She actually has quite a few 'favourite' soft toys, and can often been seen snuggling into them, leaping on them or using them as a launching pad to explore another area of the exhibit."
Elke's outside adventures take place when her Langur parents, first time mother 'Saigon' and father, 'Hanoi' who sadly rejected her at birth are inside their dens watching on. This allows Elke the opportunity to become familiar with their scent, taste the leaves that the adults also feast upon and become familiar with the area which will eventually be her fulltime home.
The infant's birth was a delightful surprise for keepers who discovered the bright orange baby in her parents' exhibit in early March. It is not uncommon for first time animal parents to reject their off-spring and with as few as 1000-5000 François Langur individuals left in the wild, Taronga's expert keepers stepped in to hand-rear the infant.
"There really have been no difficulties with her, she has been a model child, although her human parents are a little worse for wear, we are very sleep and literally moved into the Zoo to bottle feed and tend to Elke's every need," said Louise.
"As she gets older, things are getting easier. Her last feed is now at 9:30pm, which is much more civilised; initially we were getting up every two hours! Now with a full set of teeth, she has started to test out solid food including olive, poplar and fig browse and tips the scales at 680 grams, an average weight for an infant François Langur," said Louise.
Taronga's primate keepers will carry on hand-rearing Elke for many months and continue the slow process of reintroducing her to her parents. These remarkable dark-haired primates are quite unusual eating only certain variety of leaves. Francois Langurs inhabit tall riverside limestone crags in tropical monsoon forests.
