As Clarie Santiago spoke to about 20 people Sunday morning, a white-handed gibbon named Cajun swung down from the top of her enclosure with a 3-week-old black peach-fuzz fur baby clutched onto her stomach.
Santiago, 25, spoke to the audience at Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo’s Earth Day event about a typical five- to seven-minute training session zoo trainers give the gibbons. She is joining the gibbon-training team in May and will be one of the first students to work with the newborn. Santiago explained that when the trainers gave an “L” with their hands, the primates knew to open their mouth. Then, they gave them a piece of food for reward.
Santiago said she is about to begin her fourth semester as a zoo animal technology student at Santa Fe. She was assigned to work with Cajun, who gave birth March 31.
“The baby gibbon looks like a little alien with big eyes and long fingers,” Santiago said. “When it was born, it was about the size of a sweet potato, and now it’s only slightly bigger.”
Cajun, a 27-year-old primate, has lived in the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo for about 10 years, said Jade Salamone, the zoo’s conservation education specialist. The gibbon family of five includes Cajun, her two sons Rainer and Gibson, the father Eddie and the unnamed newborn.
They are one of the smallest ape species, Salamone, 33, said. They’re only about 3-feet tall standing up on their legs. When Cajun was pregnant, her stomach was the size of a basketball.
In the wild, this species lives around 30-plus years, but in captivity, they can live up to 40 years, Salamone said. Eddie is 37 years old.
The name and sex of the newborn will not be known until it is about 3 months old, Salamone said. Cajun keeps it close to her body and tucked away, making the sex unidentifiable.
Keepers discovered the baby after doing their daily enclosure checks, Salamone said.
They called Chelsea Dunlap, an assistant curator at the zoo, and asked her to come to the gibbon enclosure. Dunlap had a good feeling and asked, “Is there an extra one?” Salamone recalled.
Salamone said students who work with the gibbons get to see the newborn up close frequently during training sessions.
Cajun's trainer Sidnee Santana-Mellor reaches out to the new mother during a demonstration training session Sunday morning at the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo. The 3-week-old newborn is clinging to Cajun's stomach.
