Guests visiting the Greenville Zoo will have the opportunity to meet its newest resident. Ella, a 23-year-old female siamang, joins the zoo as a companion to Oscar, a 22-year-old male siamang.
Zoo officials are hoping the pairing will result in a successful match.
As part of a breeding recommendation by the Gibbon Species Survival Plan (SSP), Ella traded places with Arthur, a 20-year-old siamang, who is now living with a female siamang at the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kan. The Greenville Zoo works directly with the SSP who develop long-term research and management strategies for the species. Currently, siamangs are critically endangered due to habitat destruction for logging and agriculture.
According to Dr. Heather Miller, Deputy Administrator for Animal Health, the Greenville Zoo looks forward to a successful siamang breeding program. “We want to do our part to ensure we have a strong captive population since siamangs are endangered in the wild,” said Dr. Miller. “We are thrilled to share that Ella and Oscar have spent the last few days getting to know each other and are proving to be great companions,” said Dr. Miller. “We hope that means we’ll have a baby siamang in the exhibit next year.”
Siamangs are the largest species in the gibbon family, weighing 18-29 pounds and reaching approximately 2½ to 3 feet tall. They have an arm spread of as much as 5 feet, allowing them to be spectacular brachiators (arm-over-arm swinging used for locomotion). Siamangs are arboreal (tree-dwelling) primates that consume leaves, fruits, flowers and insects from the upper canopy of mountainous forest regions. One feature that distinguishes siamangs from other primates is the duet song that marks their territory with sound. It consists of loud booms and barks, amplified by resonating sounds across their inflated throat sacs. This vocalization can be heard several miles away.