LONDON, June 16 (Xinhua) -- The moment a mom formed a bond with her new baby chimp has been captured by keepers at England's Chester Zoo.
The birth of the critically endangered chimpanzee is the first for almost 10 years to be born at the famous zoo, and she's already inseparable from mom ZeeZee.
The new arrival has increased the number in the zoo's group to 20 and zoo primate experts say the baby has excited other chimps in the family.
Tim Rowlands, Curator of Mammals at the zoo, said: "Mom and baby have bonded positively and ZeeZee is naturally being incredibly protective of her newborn. She's a wonderful, experienced mother and has learnt much of her parenting skills from her own mum Mandy, who is also part of the group and always on hand to lend her support."
Western chimpanzees are the first ever chimpanzee subspecies to join the list of critically endangered apes, with conservation experts from the zoo actively involved in efforts to protect some of the world's rarest chimps in the wild.
It is estimated that there could be as few 18,000 remaining in the wild.
Primate experts say the baby is in good health and inseparable from her 24-years-old ZeeZee, already a mom of two.
The birth on June 4 follows a scientific project, spanning several years, which has carefully assessed the genetics of all chimpanzees in zoos across Europe.
The zoo's collections director Mike Jordan said: "The new arrival is particularly important as it contributes to better genetic diversity in the European Western chimpanzee population.
"It comes after a five-year-long scientific study of chimpanzees in zoos across Europe confirmed that the group of chimps at Chester is one of the rarest in the world -- making it even more important to conservation breeding than was ever thought," Jordan said.
Western chimpanzees are found in West Africa where they are patchily distributed from Senegal to Ghana and already thought to be extinct in Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo.
The new arrival has increased the number in the zoo's group to 20 and zoo primate experts say the baby has excited other chimps in the family.
Chester Zoo is also actively involved in the conservation of some of the world's rarest chimpanzee subspecies in the wild, supporting the last stronghold of another of the rarest chimpanzee subspecies, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, in Gashaka Gumti National park in Nigeria.
