Assiniboine Park Zoo shows off newborn white-handed gibbon

Assiniboine Park Zoo's newest arrival has made its first public appearance.

Staff at the zoo welcomed the birth a new white-handed gibbon Feb. 4, and the tiny primate was unveiled Thursday.

The baby was born to Maya and Samson, who were matched on a recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' species survival plan program.

"It's kind of like our zoo dating service," laughed zookeeperFran Donnelly. "Ultimately what we're trying to do is have them here in our zoo so we can inspire their conservation in the wild."

Donnelly says staff are are giving the parents time to bond with their baby and have yet to determine its sex.

That means the furry cutie has yet to be named.

The new arrival will help to rebuild the zoo's popular gibbon exhibit, which has only recently returned after the gibbons were were shipped off to Safari Niagara, a private zoo in Ontario, when the monkey house was deemed no longer suitable in 2011.

The baby's mother Maya and fatherSamson came to the zoo in 2017 after a new enclosure was built.

Donnelly says the new family will stay at the zoo.

"This is their home," she said, adding the family has deep roots at the zoo.

Maya, whowas born at the zoo in 2011, just before the gibbons were moved outwas joined by 15-year-old Samson, whose father was born at Assiniboine Park Zoo in 1992 and moved to Edmonton in 1994.

Donnelly says the zoo will likely ask for the public's help to pick a name when the time comes.

An endangered species due to habitat loss and hunting, white-handed gibbons are small, tailless arboreal apes found mainly in tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia.

They have soft, thick fur that can vary from black to a pale fawn colour and are among the fastest of all primates.