Nymburk, Central Bohemia, Feb 10 (CTK) – Chleby, a small private zoo near Nymburk, will acquire red-shanked douc langurs, a very rare monkey species of which only about 1,000 live in the world and which is bred in captivity only exceptionally, the zoo director Rene Franek has told CTK.
The two females and a male are expected to arrive from Thailand in the latter half of May. They will be put on display after a month-long quarantine period.
The douc langur feeds exclusively on a certain kind of leaves.
“We have sent Czech leaves for an analysis to Thailand. The analysis will show which leaves [that occur in the Czech Republic] correspond to the douc langur’s usual food most of all,” Franek said.
Thailand has the largest douc langur group living in captivity. In the wild, its largest populations are in Laos and Vietnam.
Apart from leaves, the monkey feeds on fruit. However, the kind of bananas they eat is not available in the Czech Republic.
“These are special small green bananas whose substances differ from common bananas. They cost about 200 crowns a kilo. We will import them,” Franek writes.
A kilo of common bananas costs about 30 crowns.
The Chleby zoo recently built another, second pavilion for primates, which imitates a southeast Asian jungle, where the new arrivals are to be accommodated.
The zoo has dropped its original plan to accommodate a tiger in the same pavilion in order to prevent the monkeys’ stress.
Franek recently spent two weeks in Thailand to acquaint himself with the douc langur breeding methods. Thai experts, for their part, visited Chleby.
The douc langur is a beautifully coloured monkey that weighs about five kilograms. Its population sharply decreased as a result of the war in Vietnam, when U.S. troops used pesticides to liquidate leaves for the sake of a better visibility.
