Santa was brought to the nursery earlier this month and is doing well but she has been having a bit of a hard time adjusting due to the poor treatment she received before coming under our care. She is physically fine and clearly likes people but just needs some time to adjust. Since she has settled in a bit, our keepers have introduced her to two of our smallest long-tailed macaques for companionship and to get her accustomed to other macaques. They are all ok together but Santa clearly still prefers the comfort of her teddy bear. With time and care from our nursery staff we are confident that she will fully settle in and regain confidence with those of her own kind.
Photos by Try Sitheng
Wildlife Alliance is the leader in direct protection to forests and wildlife in the Southeast Asian tropical belt.
Wildlife Alliance is the leader in direct protection to forests and wildlife in the Southeast Asian tropical belt.
Wildlife Alliance is the leader in direct protection to forests and wildlife in the Southeast Asian tropical belt.
Its good to see Santa starting to settle in. I have followed her since the day her mother died under dd circumstances and she was whisked away to the home of the VO that has been filming her and her mother from while he mother was in labor. It was one of those ever odd postpartum deaths that one rarely sees in an monkey when there is not some hemorrhage with the mother become ill with symptoms not related to anything going on with labor or delivery. AS, of course happens, she was immediately treated as a TV star and more filming was done then caring and a infant monkey crying due to grief, loneliness, hungry and fear are great to make dramatic videos of even if you should be trying to show an audience what a good job you can supposedly do.
Many viewers were asking then to take the newborn to a vet or call the Wildlife people but they said the baby did not need a vet and have many viewers convinced that babies die in Wildlife care and she needed one on one care and alluded to the idea that they had permission from WLA to care for her. At first they did listen to some of the things they were doing that they should not do to a baby but when the baby was calm and just eating and sleeping the videos were not popular among those that want to see drama going on so most of the things done to allow for calm care of an infant slowly stopped so they would have more videos of an upset baby. I really don’t believe she ever really had the milk that she needed as those caring for her quickly found out the stuffing her full of more solid foods, of course without the needed protein, did keep her demands to nurse happening less often and so she was not filling up on milk as she was on things that would not afford he to grow normally. that is probably a lot of the reason tat she looks a good deal smaller than the ones born during the same 2 week period and raised by mothers.
In the last month she has been display some odd behaviors on some of the videos as the women caring for her had to go back to working selling things at the roadside and initially Santa was a great interruption and interference with her work. Then they started showing video of the polite and non bothersome monkey she had become and showed clips from throughout the day where Santa would lay on her back in the top of a basket filled with other items (not blankets or bedding) appearing to be uncomfortable and pulling her legs up in what is usually a protective measure or a pain reaction and just laying there crying. This is pretty abnormal behavior for a monkey of that age who normally would be up, getting around and into tings, exploring and climbing and playing. And this is what she had been doing as well as running off which was interfering with the woman working. The change over a short time to this new behavior had many thinking that she had been strictly and painfully punished to stay laying there when put in the basket. When taken out and allowed on the ground she would do normal monkey behavioral things so there had to be some training that happened that would make her lay there fairly and cry all day as she was not sick and some originally thought since she would act normally when allowed to. Its pretty hard to training a baby monkey that completely in a 10-14 day period unless pain is used as the motivator.
Because of this we we wondered if some of the treatment she got until she was rescued by WLA was going ti interfere with rehab steps. The VO and the woman doing the most acre of Santa had decided to try and introduce her to monkeys and had no idea of what they were doing. She was dropped into groups of babies, usually older than her and had sever run ins with ones that got rough with her and this would send her away from trying to interact with them. In a few cases because this strange unknown baby was suddenly in their midst and with their babies there were a few mothers that pushed her away or tossed her away from the group of babies. I am sure none of this inspired any confidence in her or any desire to be social with her own kind, They also tried to see if they could get her to be fostered by a female money with the idea that they would still nurse her while thee monkey cared for her ll day or something like that. This involved finding a female (and not always the same species) that was more tolerant of humans and would let them close if they had food and them and then dropping Santa on their back or shoulder. This did not ever illicit a good response from the adult monkey and in one case she was attacked pretty harshly although not as harshly as could happen and she did not get any major wounds but was very scared. She has not really had a good relationship with either humans or monkeys and I hope that she is able to eventually learn to trust other monkeys. usually babies will bond with other babies but that is usually the case when they have been living without any primate contacts and they just have to get used to being with monkeys rather than humans. In Santa’s case since she was introduces, poorly, to other babies and it was a pretty negative experience those might be fears she has to overcome first.
As I am sure you know they baby, Danelia, that was being mistreated so badly by the VO’s for the sake of making dramatic videos looking like the mother was mistreating her, has been killed.by a adult male. The VO’s were luring her away from mother and other females to feed her to keep her full so mom might decide she is ready to wean and then they would have a drama over a mother weaning a ‘small baby’ but the problem was that she tended to run back immediate to mom and other females with full pouches and full mouth and give away she had food often resulting in mom taking much of it away. To avoid this they started luring her further and further away from the families and females and at one feeding session they were very far away and not only was a lone baby spotted by a male monkey but she was spotted with a whole lot of food. He literally jumped over the VO’s to get her and withing a flash has snapped her neck and disemboweled her. The VO’s got great video of it as the cameras were rolling to document feeding her and they were right there and kept right on filming through the whole attack and the aftermath. And to make things even worse, because their viewers were demanding a burial of the bay they tracked down the mother and snatched the body from her sand buried it leaving the mother sitting by where they had buried the baby, long before the monkeys had had any time to grieve.
After a few days of filling everyone in on clips they has stored up of the now dead baby as ‘memory’ videos they had since moved on and have at least 3 they are victimizing trying to see which one turns out to be the most drama for their uses. There have also been two more instances of mothers getting sick during labor and one was very ill after delivery but was not coming out of the tree with the baby which would have made rescuing the baby hard although a lot of effort was put into try and lure the sick mother down or scare her down (guess they don’t know monkeys are inclined to go up when scared). Anyway that mother seems to have recovered after throwing up a great deal and is since caring for her baby. The other sick mother decided to move off into the jungle and they followed for a while but apparently had to turn back. Given that there have been no more clips of that mother and baby that probably means the mother has not come back out of the jungle and many assume that she has died and with her the baby as no VO has produced a ‘rescued’ infant in the past 2 weeks or they do have it and are doing other things with it instead of making video’s of it. The outside chance that it was found when the mother died and has been taken to be sold is upsetting.
I have never seen so many mothers come down with something during labor and delivery that is terminal in a matter of hours. Certainly there is a chance of hemorrhage for many reasons but if it happens there is a lot of blood everywhere and its pretty obvious that a mother bled to death and in all of these cases there was very little evidence of even normal postpartum bleeding so they were obviously not bleeding to death. There are other things that could go wrong but they are not things that happen too often in a young monkey otherwise in good health.and while one of these things happening is rare it could happen but we are now talking of at least 7 instances where mother has died and one time the baby died shortly before she did and other times the baby died afterward or the baby disappeared or the more prevalent happening was that the baby was ‘rescued. You would worry about a new illness showing up that is a quickly killer but its pretty odd that other then one non pregnant adult female has had the symptoms and its happening only to pregnant monkeys in the process of or shortly after birth. It seems like something that needs investigation in case there is an unknown illness going around that could be more dangerous than realized as only pregnant monkeys or those newly postpartum are affected, as well as some infants.
you hit it right on the nail… all you said is so correct and dont forget poor Nikko and his mother poisoned both mother dying right after him .. there was video showing the VO kicking the mother. They need to get some sort of Police or security service over there so this ends.
yup had said the exact same thing after Daniela died that they lured the mother and others away and Daniela was far away and alone when that male got her. Not one of those VO’s filming released any different video and the one that’s out there was heavily edited that showed her one moment on a rock then the next clip the male grabbed her. Of course the VO apologists did the usual and denied any wrong doing yet there is always at least 5 of them taking video yet only one edited video was released.
There has been a new baby monkey named Pink that has showed up in the VO’s “Care” after Santa was rescued, channel name is Baby Monkey Pink and they have the comments turned off on all videos. This may be the missing baby you mentioned going off into the forest. Those VO’s are scum and need to be dealt with and severely punished.
Jon Wong