With their distinctive shaggy orange manes, pale blue faces, and dense fur covering their hands and feet, it’s hard to confuse China’s endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys with any other animal.
These rare and charismatic monkeys, unique to the frigid mountains of central China, have recently joined the country’s famous pandas as furry envoys to Europe’s zoos for the first time, on loan for 10 years from the same government-supervised group that coordinates official panda exchanges.
As with “panda diplomacy,” some observers welcome new opportunities for scientific and conservation collaboration, while others raise concerns about the well-being of individual animal ambassadors transported around the world.
Jumping between red and gray roofs
Three golden monkeys arrived at the French Beauval Zoo in the city of Saint-Aignan this April, following an agreement to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and France.
Another trio of golden monkeys arrived at Pairi Daiza Zoo in Hainaut, Belgium, in May. The zoo distributed Belgian and Chinese flags to visitors on the day of the monkeys’ arrival.
After a month of quarantine, the two groups of monkeys made their public debut. According to the two zoos, they appear to be in good health so far and have adapted for the first time to new climates outside of Asia.
In Pairi Daiza, Liu Yun, Lu Lu and Juan Juan’s habitat includes traditional Chinese gazebos with red columns and gray tile roofs, where the monkeys spend much of their time jumping between logs and rope ladders and climbing the roofs.
“The diplomatic aspect arises from this cultural awareness,” said Pairi Daiza spokesperson Johan Vreys.
The hope is to build lasting scientific exchanges between zoos and Chinese authorities, said Anaïs Maury, communications director at Beauval Zoo.
The zoo is in talks with China to launch joint research and conservation programs “similar to those that already exist for other iconic species such as pandas,” Maury said.
A brief history of modern ambassador animals.
Both giant pandas and golden snub-nosed monkeys are endangered animals unique to China and can only be moved out of the country with approval from the central government, said Elena Songster, an environmental historian at St. Mary’s College in California.
While both species are considered national treasures, only monkeys have deep roots in Chinese art and culture, appearing in countless paintings and as characters in classical literature, including the cunning Monkey King in the 16th-century novel “Journey to the West.”
As pandas stomped, rolled, scratched and stumbled onto the world stage in recent decades, they quickly became symbols of modern China, in part because of their own “tender cuteness” and deft diplomatic presentation, said Susan Brownell, a China historian at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
The original soft power couple of post-war China was a pair of giant pandas, Ping Ping and Qi Qi, sent to the Soviet Union in 1957 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, which led to the establishment of the world’s first communist state.
In 1972, a pair of pandas was sent to the United States for the first time, following President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing. In 1984, China switched from giving pandas to lending them.
Following protests from animal rights activists, China ended the practice of short-term loans and began longer leases, typically around a decade. In this agreement through the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association, part of the money a foreign zoo pays annually to China must go toward habitat conservation or scientific research to benefit the species.
Still, what benefits one species may not be beneficial for a particular animal. Transporting animals long distances and sending their offspring back to China, as the agreements require, can greatly stress the animals, said Jeff Sebo, an environmental and bioethics researcher at New York University.
“Animal health and welfare are important,” he said, “not just for geopolitical or strategic objectives.”
Habitat conservation in China
Within China, golden snub-nosed monkeys today live in a swath of central and southwestern China that includes parts of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Hubei provinces.
In Shennongjia National Park in Hubei, conservation efforts since the 1980s have helped triple the region’s population to about 1,600 monkeys today, said Yang Jingyuan, president of the park’s Academy of Sciences.
It’s unclear exactly how to evaluate the diplomatic record of furry ambassadors.
Still, in an era of rising global tensions, “I think pandas are a really useful entry,” said James Carter, a China historian at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “Pandas open an opportunity for people to think something positive about China: they’re cute, they don’t do anything bad.”
The golden snub-nosed monkeys now in zoos in France and Belgium are so far the only ones outside Asia.
“China’s golden snub-nosed monkeys are not globally iconic yet,” Brownell said, “but there is a chance they will be in the future.”
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Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Shennongjia National Park contributed to this report.
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