Your morning adorable: Baby gibbon drinks from a bottle in German zoo

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At Germany’s Schwerin Zoo, keeper Christina Schneider has been enlisted to act as a surrogate mother for Walli, a 3-week-old gibbon. Walli’s mother rejected him shortly after his birth, meaning that zoo staff have needed to step in to raise him themselves.

Toward that end, the baby receives bottle-feedings every two hours, according to the Daily Mail. Zoo staff expect to care for him around the clock until he’s about 6 months old, at which point they hope he’ll be mature enough to live with the zoo’s other gibbons.

Gibbons are considered ‘lesser apes,’ a name that, despite the way it may sound, isn’t a value judgment about them! They differ in a few main ways from the ‘great apes’ -- gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and the like -- and in some ways more closely resemble monkeys than apes. For instance, unlike great apes, gibbons don’t build nests to sleep in, preferring instead to sleep sitting up with their arms wrapped around their knees! They’re native to forested regions of southeast Asia.

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-- Lindsay Barnett