This is Jose Marie, a white handed gibbon. He is one of several gibbons who arrived here from a Texas home where he was kept as a pet.

The woman who had him and several others had converted a barn to act as their home. They even had their own "house keeper" who helped to look after them. So for many years, the gibbons were maintained by a Spanish speaker caretaker and the gibbons basically learned to understand Spanish.

Jose Marie is no exception to this fun truth, If I go out there and call Jose Marie to say shift him from enclosure to another via an over head tunnel, he just stares at me.

However, if one of the Spanish speaking caregivers go out and ask him in Spanish to move here, "he just moves over." He is a really cool gibbon who could certainly use an animal sponsor.