We had a good evening. First we had our canapes and chatted to a lady who is in the travel business and has visited various apes in the course of her (obviously very horrible) work
I now wish I'd got more info but she has visited gorillas in Rwanda and been back to an orphanage a couple of times.
We split into groups and our first port of call was the monkey house. It's interesting that a lot is up high because it's natural for the monkeys to go high and it allows them privacy. The lion tailed macaques were not at all happy to see us and made it plain! The De Brazza's monkeys were rather more sweet natured and a bit shy but won over by food, they have really spectacular faces. The howler monkeys also came to see us.
We then went into the lemurs and the man who talked to us had worked on research projects in Madagascar, one of the interesting things he was saying was that the mongoose lemur is active (in bursts) day and night which poses a challenge for feeding & enrichment because zoos work in the daytime. It started to rain which meant the next group got their thing in the twilight house with the aye-ayes which we were a bit jealous about.
We then went to the vet and it was really interesting. She was telling us about the regular stuff they do and showed us their smallest and biggest ET (endo-tracheal) tubes for giving anaesthetic, a huge range of sizes compared to what a human doctor would have to deal with. She told us about the tests they do regularly and the checks when animals come into or out of the zoo. Someone had placed an range of cuddly animals on the operating tables
Then we went to the gorilla house (inside because it was raining) and the gorillas were fed. Kera is fully integrated in the group now but she's still a bit wary of Jock, she loves Komale and they play a lot together. She was doing Sally twirls whilst he was talking.
They may treat Romina with Clomid like Salome was because she isn't cycling properly. Kera is beginning to but they'd like her to see a bit of Jock action with the other females before he starts on her and he is interested in her. It'd be good if there was at least one other baby before she has one. Jock is just amazing at close quarters! Namoki is a naughty girl but allowed to get away with it by Jock, they said if he's in her way in the doorway she just hits him with a rope until he lets her go past.