章節 63: Chapter 629: Skywalking Gibbon
While Fang Ye was immersed in his design, his phone suddenly "dinged".
He glanced at it and saw that someone had added him on WeChat, using a White-browed Gibbon as their profile picture.
The remark was named Fan Peng, a researcher of gibbons.
Fang Ye added him as a friend: "Hello, Professor Fan!"
"Hello, Director Fang! It's like this, this matter might be a bit complicated..."
"No problem, take your time."
Fan Peng spent a long time explaining!
Fan Peng is a researcher of gibbons, and their main research subject is the skywalking gibbon.
It was originally believed that there were two types of white-browed gibbons, western white-browed gibbons and eastern white-browed gibbons. But the skywalking gibbon is a unique white-browed gibbon in China, which was often mixed up with the eastern white-browed gibbon.
A few years ago, ICUN divided the white-browed gibbon into another species, which was the work of Fan Peng and his team.
Fang Ye was respectful: "I'm sorry for my ignorance! Wait, are you saying that the gibbons in our zoo are skywalking gibbons?"
Fan Peng replied, "Yes, although the skywalking gibbon also has the characteristic white eyebrows, they are not as thick as those of the eastern white-browed gibbon.
Male skywalking gibbons do not have white beards that match their eyebrows, and the white eye rings of female skywalking gibbons are not as dense as those of the eastern white-browed gibbons."
He continued.
Gibbons live in forests, and the people in the forests have to cultivate the forests on a small scale for their livelihood, planting food or cash crops. Although it seems that there is no change in the forest, for gibbons who rely on tall trees for activity, the gaps formed by planting between the trees are like cliffs to them.
Trees that cannot be reached by both arms are like unattainable islands for gibbons.
People can always find ways to cultivate the forests, from surviving to living better, while the simple gibbons are still at the stage of remembering which tree's fruit is just ripe.
Out of avoidance, they had to migrate again and again with the expansion of people.
After their research over the past few years, they found that the number of skywalking gibbons is very small, probably only about 40 families, and the number of wild populations does not exceed 150.
The forest is divided, the habitat is fragmented, and the reproduction of skywalking gibbons has become a problem.
They found a female gibbon near a gibbon family, who seemed to be the cousin of the male gibbon of this family.
There were no single male gibbons nearby, so Fan Peng and his team started to help her look for potential mates in more distant places.
During a previous survey, they remembered that a pair of old gibbons had two sons. After another search, they found that one had already started a family, while the other was still single.
The two single gibbons were far apart from each other, so how could they bring them together?
The method of anesthetizing them and changing their locations wouldn't work. Skywalking gibbons usually stay in trees, and it's hard to track them. Moreover, they move very swiftly in the trees, making it even harder to anesthetize them.
Even if they could be hit, what if they fell from a tree tens of meters high and died?
If successful in anesthetizing, gibbons are animals with strong territoriality. If the families nearby suddenly found a strange gibbon intruding into their territory, there could be conflict and fights. The anesthetized gibbon would move slowly, and what if it was killed in the fight?
In short, anesthesia carries a great risk.
So Fan Peng and his team thought of a roundabout solution. The gibbons are not easy to move, but their songs can move easily.
After years of research, they found that the songs of the gibbons are not meaningless. Different melodies might have different lyrical meanings.
If they recorded the mating songs of single gibbons and played them, could they attract them to move towards the direction of the song?
Of course, such an operation also has scientific ethical risks!
Under normal circumstances, they should only observe the wild population and not interfere artificially, otherwise, it might change their habits and produce unpredictable consequences.
But now the skywalking gibbons are already very endangered, with only over 150 left. If they just wait and do nothing, the two single gibbons are too far apart, separated by many family territories, and they might never meet in their lifetime.
So after careful consideration, Fan Peng and his team decided to intervene.
The single love song doesn't necessarily have to start with the male gibbon who is ready to mate. Tracking gibbons in the dense rainforest is a difficult task. The gibbons can swing to another tree in two swings, while the people on the ground have to climb over mountains and valleys, with branches pulling at their arms and vines tripping their feet.
Finding a single gibbon in the zoo as an alternative, recording its mating song, this operation would be much easier.
After all, they are all mating songs.
They had visited the Flying Ape Zoo a few times when they were studying the skywalking gibbons before, and they remembered that they had two young male gibbons there. They wondered if they had reached the age of mating, but when they asked, they found out that both male gibbons had been transferred to Linhai Zoo.
That's the whole story.
Just then, a "ding" sound rang out, and the system prompt sounded: "Rare animal clue has appeared!"
[Animal: Skywalking Gibbon
Location: Gaoligong Mountain area, Yunnan
Protection time: Ten years (Within the protection time, the animal will not be in danger of life)
Remark: The forest is disappearing at a rate of 30 hectares per minute, how fast do I need to go to catch up with your shadow?
Reward: Membership certificate of the World Zoo Association!]
Fang Ye was surprised when he saw the reward: "Wow!"
There is also a zoo association in China, and Fang Ye had asked the director of the Blue River Zoo at the beginning, asking whether he should join.
He learned that it doesn't matter whether you join or not, buying and transferring animals will not be affected by whether you join the association.
Every year they go to a meeting, where everyone shares the breeding situation of the animals and the good cases of enrichment.
Of course, it's not very useful, the excellent zoos have more individual exchanges, and the bad zoos still won't improve.
Anyway, it's a more official association, everyone gets together for a meeting and speaks.
But all the zoos in China have basically joined, and Fang Ye lost interest after learning about the situation. Why bother with this hustle and bustle.
But the World Zoo Association is different! Only the best zoos in the world can join.
There are hundreds of members in the world, with so many large and small zoos, and there are very few in China that are members of the World Zoo Association.
The original zoo had no restrictions on buying and introducing animals, but now if you want to buy some rare animals from zoos in other countries, such as silverback gorillas, koalas, Komodo dragons, you must at least be a member of the association to have the qualifications to buy, it's not something you can buy if you want to.
The main reason is to protect some endangered wild animals from entering the zoo through smuggling channels, and those who buy animals also have enough level to keep them well.
Of course, qualifications are one aspect, whether you can buy it or not is another aspect.
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