“Gibbon us another chance” – Fota Wildlife Park Ape Campaign

Fota Wildlife Park’s Ape Campaign will commence this weekend with all sorts of ape related events taken part across the park. There will be an exciting “Ape Olympics” to coincide with father’s day where they can win some fantastic prizes such as a three ball round of golf at Fota Golf resort as well as memberships to Fota Wildlife Park and also free summer camps places.

To win the prize the dads will have to act like apes in our banana toss, knuckle and gorilla races and compete with other dads. The races will be on every hour from 12 noon till 3 pm resulting in four winners. There will also be ape face painting, magician and other great activities to keep the whole family entertained.

Also our wildlife talks team will be on hand to offer invaluable advice our own resident apes in the park, the Lar gibbons, Agile Gibbons and Siamang Gibbons. As well as showing the public the different foods the apes eat they will also show the Enrichment tools used with those dietary items to show how Fota improves  the captive animals behaviour.

Why is Fota doing all this? Well as members of EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquariums) Fota is helping with the annual conservation campaign. Last year carnivores were the focus of the campaign but this year all eyes are on our close relatives the apes. As apes have no natural predators in the wild is fair to assume that Human Interference is to blame for their untimely decline.

Patrick Dunphy from marketing says “While we don’t house any of the greater apes here at Fota we do have three species of the Lesser Ape also known as the Gibbon which are the Lar gibbon, Agile gibbon and the Siamang Gibbon all of whom are listed as endangered”

So in order to give something back to the ape world Fota are running this campaign  to raise both awareness and funds for the EAZA Ape Campaign. Funds generated by Fota will go to help establish the EAZA Ape Campaign Fund

Interesting Ape Facts

Apes are different species to monkeys with noticeable differences one main difference is that apes don’t have tails

Since Apes do not have any natural predators and their numbers are is serious decline then it’s obvious that human interference is the main cause of the untimely decline

There are two types of apes: the greater and lesser apes. Greater apes been gorillas, orang-utan, chimpanzee etc and the lesser apes also known as gibbons such as the Lar gibbon and the Siamang Gibbon