San Diego Zoo’s 37-Year-Old Ape on Birth Control Has a Baby

A zoo ape has given birth to her seventh child despite being on birth control, according to San Diego Zoo officials on Nov. 20.

Eloise, a 37-year-old siamang which is a type of gibbon, gave birth on Nov. 12, The Associated Press reported.

Eloise didn’t show any signs of pregnancy, and it’s not clear why the birth control didn’t work.

Jill Andrews said the zoo is overjoyed and she indicated that any birth involving an endangered species is a reason to be happy.

Officials have yet to determine if the baby is a male or a female. They want to leave Eloise and the baby alone. A name hasn’t been picked.

The San Diego Zoo allows people to watch the apes via it’s “Ape Cam.”

The siamang is a type of gibbon native to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. They can grow to 3.3 feet (1 meter) in height and can weigh 30 pounds.

The animals are “usually found in the trees at a height of 80 to 100 feet (25 to 30 meters) in Malaysia and Indonesia ... Their furry bodies are black (both males and females), they don’t have tails, and they have a large gray or pink throat sac that inflates when they call. Unlike great apes, siamangs do not build nests, because they sleep sitting upright in the fork of a tree, usually alone but sometimes huddled together,” according to San Diego Zoo.

Their diet mainly consists of fruit but they also eat leaves and sometimes small birds, eggs, spiders, and insects.

In the zoo, they’re fed biscuits made especially for zoo leaf eaters and a variety of fruits and vegetables such as oranges, apples, bananas, melons, grapes, yams, Romaine lettuce, spinach, turnips, carrots, and onions. They also get a selection of leafy material, including banana, hibiscus, and eugenia leaves.

Endangered

The zoo says siamangs are endangered due to a “loss of habitat due to logging and agriculture.”

“Additionally, many adults are killed so their young can be sold into the illegal pet trade, even though siamangs are a protected species,” it says.

The zoo first received its first siamangs in 1928.

“In the wild, siamangs might travel up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) in a day. And when they’re not swinging through the trees, travel is on dry land (siamangs cannot swim and avoid the water). On the rare occasions they do choose ground travel, they walk on two legs, holding their arms over their heads for balance,” the zoo states.

According to the Smithsonian National Zoo, “Their arms are longer than the legs of the white-cheeked gibbon, and their hands and feet are broader. The arm length may reach two and a half times the length of the body. The primates have slight webbing between their second and third toes. Both sexes have long canine teeth, opposable thumbs and a great toe that is deeply separated from the other toes.”

Watch next:

Man Climbs Barrier at Oakland Zoo, Gets Close to Tiger