Gogoi with Dhundhun at Assam state zoo on Friday. Picture by S.H. Patgiri

June 30: It will be a special occasion for the staff at the Assam state zoo this Monday, when they celebrate the first birthday of Dhundhun, a stump-tailed macaque.

The birthday of this young member of the zoo family is no ordinary affair. The one-year-old macaque is the first animal to have been successfully “hand-reared” by the zoo staff.

“It is a special day for the zoo as we have successfully taken care of her after she lost her mother. This is a successful case of hand-rearing of an animal in the zoo,” divisional forest officer of the zoo Narayan Mahanta said.

The baby macaque passed into the care of zoo veterinarian B.K. Gogoi soon after her mother died.

Raising a macaque is no easy task. There are risks in hand-rearing the Macaca arctoides, as the species is known scientifically, in captivity. But Gogoi has played the role of foster parent to perfection.

“This is just love and care from my side. What makes it a special occasion is that it is very difficult to bring up an orphan,” Gogoi said.

The veterinarian is a picture of affection every time he visits the orphan primate in her enclosure.

“I still remember July 3 last year. Everybody had given up hope after we saw the body of her mother with the child still clinging on to it,” Gogoi said, recalling the day when he took up the challenge to bring up little Dhundhun.

“One has to give her all the love and care which she would have got from her mother. This is very difficult to understand and requires long hours of hard work and dedication,” Gogoi added.

Mahanta said the zoo had been looking for someone to adopt Dhundhun, and the NGO Aaranyak had come forward to take charge of its new ward for a year.

Monday will have thrills aplenty, both for Dhundhun and for the kids in the area.

The children have already started making posters and banners carrying information on the species, in a bid to generate awareness about the means and necessity for the conservation of our fellow creatures. “They love to eat cakes too,” Gogoi quipped.

Gathering information for the banners which will be put up on Monday, was as challenging as it was interesting. “This was a big challenge as there is not much extensive literature available on the stump-tailed macaque,” Gogoi said. When young animals lose their mothers early, rearing them under human care requires a lot of love and attention, not to mention skill. But what makes the real difference, he said, is having a big heart. “That shows whether the person has the abiding determination to save the animal,” he said.

Gogoi’s wife Sujata also chips in to help him take care of the animals.

The stump-tailed macaque is a highly endangered species and there are only about 250 such primates left in the Northeast, north Myanmar, China and Thailand. Regular habitat fragmentation poses a serious threat to the population of the primate species.

The zoo now has 10 stump-tailed macaques, of which seven are males. It got its first stump-tailed macaque in 1992.