Zoo Project Essay Example

their faces and fur are thought to be most attractive to females.

Their bright colors also play a role in keeping the troop together as they travel in the forest. Mandrill troops contain one dominant male, several females, and their offspring, usually about 20 animals. Super troops of several hundred may gather where food is plentiful. Mandrills come equipped with their own built-in carry-out containers. They have large cheek pouches inside their mouths that they can stuff full of food to eat at a later time. Sometimes they take their goodies to a safer location before enjoying them. Mandrills mainly eat seeds, nuts, fruits, and small animals.

Mandrills communicate through scent marking, vocalizations and body language. Sometimes mandrills shake their heads and “grin” widely to show their enormous canine teeth, which can be 2. 5 inches long. This may appear intimidating to us, but it’s usually a friendly gesture within the mandrill community. Mandrills are the most closely related to and share a habitat with the drills, the most critically endangered primate species in Africa. Siamangs are the smallest apes with the biggest voices. Their status is endangered.

Siamangs can swing through trees so rapidly that they almost appear to be flying, sometimes leaping as far as 50 feet in a downward direction. Efficient and graceful in the trees, they are awkward on the ground. Rather than building nests, Siamangs sleep upright in tree foliage. Siamangs weigh between 17 and 28 pounds and are superbly adapted for life in the trees. They move between the trees by swinging from branch to branch by their long, hooked-fingered hands. Their jet black coat is

heavy, shaggy fur. The face is naked except for scattered and sparse stubble of moustache and beard.

Siamangs spend almost all of their time high in the forest canopies of Sumatra and mainland Malaysia. Siamangs are omnivores and feed on fruits (especially figs), buds, foliage, flowers, insects, spiders, small lizards, birds and bird eggs. At the Zoo, the Siamangs are fed a diet of bread, cooked sweet potatos, bananas, apples, oranges and lettuce. The basic Siamang social group is a family made up of one male, one female, and as many as four of their young. Within each family, food is generously shared and fighting rarely occurs. Members of the same family will drive off strangers.

Grooming is the most important social behavior. Siamangs are monogamous, and display an unusually high level of parental care. At about one year of age, the adult male takes over most of the daily care of the young. But the prolonged maternal care of infants by the mother may last as long as 20 months. There were three Siamangs doing three different things. Two of them spent most of their time grooming to each other while the third one swang from tree to tree, walked for a little bit than took rest. He used a branch of a large tree, lying on his back then rolled over to his stomach, enjoying a nice, peaceful day.