A critically endangered roloway monkey recently gave birth at Chester Zoo, mere months after undergoing ground-breaking surgery that saved her foot from amputation.
Last year, Chester Zoo’s Masaya suffered from a mass the size of a golf-ball, but surgeons and vets from the Small Animal Teaching Hospital at Liverpool University successfully performed a complicated operation and removed it.
The surgical team managed to save almost all the monkey’s toes, despite having no existing examples of the procedure being carried out on her species.
Now, the 15-year-old primate has given birth to a new-born female, Lagertha. Primate Keeper for Chester Zoo, Zoe Edwards, commented:
“Masaya is a very experienced mum and she’s parenting magnificently. Lagertha is only a few weeks old and is very dinky, but already curious about the roloway monkey habitat and inquisitive about us.”
The keeper added that the successful result of her surgery was a great relief, as an amputation would have called into question her ability to care for offspring.
Today, there are fewer than 2,000 roloway monkeys in the wild. They can be found on the Ivory Coast and in Ghana, but face critical threats from human activity like poaching.
Chester Zoo is one of just two sites in the UK with roloway monkeys, and is working to help support the species. In collaboration with the European Endangered Species Programme, the zoo is working on a breeding project that will help ensure the monkeys survive. As such, Masaya and Lagertha play an important part in its plans.
Visitors to Chester Zoo can now see the roloway monkeys in their built-for-purpose habitat within the grounds.