At the Zoological Park of the Citadel of Besançon an extraordinary birth is causing great joy. Already on May 6 a young greater bamboo lemur was born there – one of the rarest primates on Earth. The zoo made the news public only a few weeks later. The keepers first wanted to ensure that the youngster developed healthily and got through the first delicate weeks of life without problems.
It is not yet known whether it is a male or a female. The little animal spends all of its time clinging tightly to its mother Tsingy. For the just three-year-old female lemur this is her first offspring, and she is showing herself to be extremely attentive and caring. The father Dakari and another female relative also live in the same enclosure. Nevertheless Tsingy has so far deliberately kept her youngster at a distance and allows only little contact with the other animals – a behavior that is quite typical for newly made lemur mothers.
The greater bamboo lemur is among the most threatened mammals worldwide. Because of its preference for bamboo it is sometimes nicknamed the ‘Little Panda of Madagascar’, although the two species are not related. Its diet consists predominantly of bamboo, whose leaves and shoots it eats even when they contain substances that would be poisonous to many other animals.
In the wild there are estimated to be only between 1,000 and 1,500 individuals left. Their habitat is limited to a small area in the central east of Madagascar. Outside of the wild there are only around 40 greater bamboo lemurs in European zoos. Every successful birth therefore carries enormous weight for international species conservation.
The reasons for the dramatic decline of the population are diverse. Deforestation destroys the animals’ habitat, and poaching further pressures the populations. Added to this are the effects of climate change and increasingly severe tropical cyclones that devastate large parts of the forests. As a result the already small refuge areas of the lemurs shrink year by year.
European conservation breeding programs aim to preserve as much genetic diversity as possible within the zoo population. At the same time the animals provide valuable insights into behavior, reproduction, and rearing. This knowledge helps in the long term to design protection measures for the remaining wild populations more effectively.
For the Besançon Zoo the birth has a very special significance. Since 2005 only seven greater bamboo lemurs have been born there. The last successful birth was already more than a decade ago and dated from 2013. The new youngster therefore stands for much more than just a welcome offspring in the zoo. It symbolizes the hope that even highly endangered species can still have a future with consistent protection and international cooperation.
Author: C.H.