Basel Zoo in Switzerland has been caught in a scandal that sounds like something straight offThe Jerry Springer Show . A fatherhood test has exposed some rather risqué going away - on in the orangutan enclosure .
At the center of it all is the 5 - calendar month - old Padma , whose fatherhood test threw up some unexpected results . To get to the nitty - gritty of the story , her father is not who the keeper thought he was .
Orangutans ( Pongo abelii ) at Basel Zoo are part of the Endangered Species Program . This means faculty test to match couples so that the male and female orangutans have as little DNA in common as physically possible to further as much genic diverseness within the zoo as they can . And so , 11 - twelvemonth - honest-to-goodness Maja was pair with 14 - year - old Budi .
Only the results of the paternity test show that Budi is not piffling Padma ’s biological Father of the Church . That responsibility lies with 18 - year - old Vendel , the zoo ’s dominant male who just so fall out to be inhabit in an all different inclosure to Maja .
The keepers suspect Maja has been meeting Vendel at the fencing that borders the two enclosing for a small ten - rated fun .
Unlike Budi , Vendel has cheek stamp pad . In fact , he is the only one of the three males in the enclosure to feature such fabulously exuberant face flaps , well known as flanges . And , accord toBasel Zoo ’s site , female orangutans discover fellas with flanges irresistible .
The team regularly try baby orang to double over check their authorship , using similar run to those used to find out paternity in man . This is the first time the trial run has come back with a surprising result but there are plenty of illustration from zoo elsewhere to show animals enjoy life that are just as nappy and colorful as any human .
Last year , Loveland Living Planet Aquarium , in Utah , revealed their usually - monogamous Gentoo penguins had been involved ina ménage à trois . ( They did add that this did not arrive as too much as a surprise – monogamousness and fidelity are not inevitably conditional for penguin . ) And Odense Zoo in Denmark saw bedlam when one cheeky couplekidnappedanother ’s bird .
allow ’s hope , for Padma ’s saki , Maja , Budi , and Vendel can get past this viscid matter and live on happily as one big modern family .
[ H / T : Basel Zoo ]
