Sifaka birth season is now officially over! In addition to the birth of Pia’s infant, Gisela, on 7 January (reported earlier in this blog), 13 year old Rupillia gave birth to a son, Remus, on 12 January (sire is 24 year old Tiberius), and 4.5 year old Rodelinda gave birth to a daughter on 26 January (sire is 8 year old Marcus).
Sadly, this will be the last infant for Rupi and Tiberius, as they are calling it quits as a breeding pair (although they will of course remain friends assuming Tiberius remains adequately subservient). But their break up (no pun intended) is not really their choice, as Tiberius has had two broken bones the last couple of years, apparently from falls while tree hopping in NHE 7. Since Rupi’s group is free ranging, Tiberius is just going to have to find (or be assigned to) a more sedentary mate.
The one bit of sad news this birth season, was that Drusilla (free ranging in the warmer months in NHE 8) delivered a stillborn infant on January 30th. The last couple of years Drusilla has started to have problems delivering infants, in large part due to their extremely large parts. This latest was a whopping140 grams, largest ever reported birthweight for a sifaka.
The really great news about this sifaka birth season is that two out of three infants born at DLC are female, and our in house sifaka population now stands at 14 males and 13 females, its healthiest ratio in years!
For whatever reason, sifaka birth season seems to be becoming less spread out over a period of two or more months, and births are seemingly starting to clump into a shorter time span. This past birth season (including the four institution where DLC sifaka are on loan) there were seven births in January (most ever in a single month) and only one outside of January (in early February to a pair on loan at Sacramento).
