On The Way to Qaraganda: Adventures of Monkeys and Albino Kangaroos

The Qaraganda Zoo has quite the addition. Extremely rare albino wallabies and De Brazza's monkeys have made it their home; Orda.kz shares their story.

The albino pygmy wallabies from the Czech zoo are usually smaller than regular kangaroos and are a dark brown color. Although their homeland is Australia, wallabies tolerate the cold better than their larger relatives.

This is a very rare species. These are dwarf albino walabi. They have already adapted to us during the quarantine period. Of course, they were sick. These are very gentle animals, very capricious. They took a long time to adapt to our food but finally decided what they like, what kind of forage, what kind of products. says Gulnara Adambekova, director of the Qaraganda Zoological Park. 

Zootechnician Amin Alina says:

Australian animals eat grass and roots. Not all zoos have them. They are mostly brown, and we have albinos. We specifically chose albinos, and I think they will take root here. Last year, gray kangaroos came to the zoo, they have already given birth to offspring. We hope these will give birth too. They are still young. 

The De Brazza's monkeys, with their white "whiskers" and "beards," were jokingly nicknamed "aksakals" (beard in Kazakh—Ed.). They arrived in Qaraganda only at the end of October. The original plans were to have them in the zoo in the summer.

But on the way to our airport, one of the females gave birth to a baby. Naturally, there is a SITES program, according to which each animal must have a passport - a permit document after passing all the tests and permissions of veterinarians for customs. No one will just let this baby through. So, the whole family was returned back to the zoo of this city of Khleby in order to get the documents. They were filed for three months. And only at the end of October, this beautiful family arrived to us on the Prague-Astana flight,
 Gulnara Adambekova said.

Now, the rare monkeys have successfully settled into life at the zoo.

The staff is currently working on creating a cozy hammock and a house for the monkeys. Plans also include installing a video camera to observe the new inhabitants' nightlife.

Original Author: Inna Rutz