Thanks for the permission, we would also like you to have time to answer a few questions for us.

1.Could you provide us with the Latin name of the primate species? Mandrillus leucophaeus

2. Does the baby have a name? Her name is Akira and she is a female

3. What about his mother and her father? Her mother is Abuja and her father Rafiki, both live with the baby and the rest of the drills, currently the group consists of 10 members.

4. What is the conservation status of the species? Drills are included in the IUCN red list and their alarming decline raises concerns that their situation will be considered “critical”.

5. Does human activity affect the conservation status of the species? Which way? Man is its main predator. The crowned eagle and the leopard are perhaps its two most fearsome natural predators.

6. Is the baby generally curious about the other animals he comes into contact with? The baby has begun to move and discover the enclosure, he plays a lot with the rest of the offspring of his species and is very curious about the rest of the species with which he lives, as can be seen in the images, his protective mother tries to keep him under control .

7. What other animals do you encounter every day? The calf lives with its family in the area that recreates the riverside forests in the area of ​​Equatorial Africa, in the multispecies enclosure other species of animals coexist such as sitatungas, pygmy hippos, talapoins and Nile geese.

8. Is it part of EAZA and other observing programs? It is within the European Endangered Species Program (EEP) and is included in the red list of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), it is feared that, with a population of less than 4,000 individuals and with a downward trend, your situation is now considered “critical”. Of primary concern is its extreme fragmentation, habitat loss, and poaching, so each birth represents a success toward survival.

9. Is the baby primate well behaved or mischievous? Like any primate, he loves games and is much more active than adults, so her mother has to have “patience” to take care of him, feed him and teach him the behaviors typical of her species.

10. What can you tell us about the social organization of these primates? It has a unimale social system, groups of a male with a group of females, a male can have more than 20 females. Males migrate and can remain solitary.
During the break, the drills indulge in the well-known “social facilitation” maneuver: mutual deworming. To incite his females to such work, the dominant male touches them lightly on the rump and initiates a brief deworming, rummaging through their fur, which has the virtue of stimulating his partner to a task to which he will dedicate much more time and meticulousness. than the male.

11. What can people do to support you in your conservation efforts? The first step to conserve a species is to know it, in the end we only love, care for and protect what we know and care about. The BIOPARC FOUNDATION also supports nature conservation https://www.bioparcvalencia.es/fundacion/