Jing Jing, Mei Mei on Loan From China : L.A. Zoo Finally Gets Rare Pair: Golden Monkeys

Jing Jing, 13, and Mei Mei, 11, two golden monkeys that used to live in the high mountains of western China, have finally come to Los Angeles--two years after they might have had it not been for a quick maneuver by a San Diego Zoo delegation.

The monkeys, on loan from the People’s Republic of China for six months, will go on exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo today. At last.

Los Angeles city and zoo officials expressed interest in exhibiting golden monkeys when they visited China in April, 1984, to arrange for the loan of the two giant pandas that drew record crowds during the Olympics here.

They hoped to press the issue in July of that year, when the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. held a luncheon here for a Peking delegation to honor China for lending the pandas. But the head of the delegation, the secretary general of the China Wildlife Conservation Assn., never made it to the lunch.

Zoo officials later learned that the Chinese official had been met in the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot by two men and had left with them. The two represented the San Diego Zoo and struck a deal for the loan of two golden monkeys.

Los Angeles Zoo officials, as might be expected, were upset at the “kidnaping” of their VIP, but the anger seems to have faded.

Zoo association President Marcia Hobbs said Thursday that the Chinese became amenable to lending Jing Jing and Mei Mei to Los Angeles when they realized that the $300,000 air-conditioned China Pavilion, specially built for the giant Panda visit, was “the absolute latest in zoo design.”

Mayor Bradley asked the Chinese on his visit there to lend golden monkeys to Los Angeles. Hobbs at last was able to arrange it.

Perhaps not as famous as the giant pandas, the golden monkeys are no less unusual and rare, zoo officials said.

An endangered species, they have sky-blue faces, snubbed noses and long blond hair trailing down their backs.

Because of the long hair, along with a human-like sound it makes--like a baby’s cry--and the ability to straighten its legs and stand upright, the golden monkey has in the wild been mistaken for a hairy man, officials said. In ancient times it was thought to be a demon.

“They’re the source of myths and legends, among them the legend of the ‘abominable snowman,’ ” Hobbs said Thursday.

The $70,000 cost of the exhibit, including transportation for the monkeys and the Chinese delegation that brought them, was donated by industrialist Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum Corp.

A pair of Chinese alligators and two red pandas that moved in after the star pandas left the China Pavilion are bunking elsewhere, a zoo spokeswoman said.

Still under a monthlong quarantine since their arrival June 27, they are confined to the indoor section of the enclosure, where eucalyptus branches have been installed for swinging and climbing, and the temperature is kept at about 65 degrees.

Indoor-Outdoor

Once the quarantine is lifted, the monkeys will have the choice, as the pandas once did, of whether to be inside or to wander the outer enclosure with its trees, rocks and pool.

So far Mei Mei, the female, is the timid one and Jing Jing, the male, is rambunctious, said Birdie Foster, a Los Angeles Zoo keeper for 18 years who was assigned to care for the monkeys under the supervision of a Chinese keeper and veterinarian.

Each morning Foster cuts mulberry leaves, washes and dries them and then strings them around the eucalyptus branches. Then she sets a metal pan on the dirt floor, filled with other foods such as whole-wheat bread, apples or banana slices, and the monkeys’ favorite, broccoli.

Protects Her Food

“He’s definitely dominant, but she has ways to get around him,” Foster said of her new charges. “If he wants to steal her broccoli, she’ll keep eating it, turning and turning in circles so he can’t get it.”

When zoo staffers, who so far have been the monkeys’ only visitors, stare through the glass, Foster has noticed that Jing Jing will sometimes pick a person out and stare. “He’ll be swinging around and all of a sudden he’ll zero in,” she said, “and you know you’re being stared at. You’re supposed to be intimidated by that look.”

The monkeys are huggers, she said, and out in the wild will herd together and hug each other for warmth or security. The two frequently hug now, Foster said. “Mei Mei will elicit hugging by bumping her head against his chest.”

The two sleep on a shelf in the night enclosure just off the indoor section, she said. “They prefer to eat up high and when they sleep they sleep up high.”

Jing Jing and Mei Mei are not the same pair exhibited at San Diego. Yet another pair is currently on exhibit at the San Francisco Zoological Gardens.

According to Hobbs, the zoo association is arranging a fund-raising drive while the monkeys are in Los Angeles to assist the newly formed Chinese Assn. of Zoological Gardens in preserving wild animals in China. She said the group hopes to raise $150,000 to $160,000.