Lino, the capuchin monkey who for almost four decades lived in an apartment in Barcelona’s Eixample, along with his now nonagenarian owner, is adapting to what has been his new home for just a week, the facilities that the Mona Foundation has in Riudellots from the jungle.
“He is very alert and in two or three days he has made an impressive change,” explained the center’s director, Olga Feliu, this past Thursday. She notices it, she says, in his mobility, that he is more agile than he was when he arrived, and in her curious look at everything around him. Often – he says – he is stunned watching the fluttering of birds through the window through which the sunlight enters.
“He loves to sit in the sun. When he arrived, the poor guy was in a hurry, very dry and with poorly developed muscles since he couldn’t get much exercise in the cage where he was; The floor of the cabin was bars and he had no structures to move at height, now he is able to go down and up, although slowly because Lino is older,” explains Feliu. His age would be around 38 or 40 years old. His life expectancy is 45 years.
At the moment Lino is in quarantine, isolated in a room of about 25 cubic meters, where he has hanging structures that allow him to move at height, a small wooden house, his bed, tree branches and nuts, which the nasturtium species find he particularly likes to break. Although he doesn’t have enough strength. For now, he only receives daily visits from the caregivers who deliver him food and clean his new home, which is temporary.
The idea is that when Lino overcomes this adaptation phase he can live in a community with other monkeys of his species, although it will not be in freedom. Nor will it be in the facilities that the Mona Foundation has in Riudellots de la Selva, since there are no others of his kind there. The most likely thing is that he goes to a center in Madrid where there are other capuchin monkeys, elderly, like him.
“Returning him to the jungle of Venezuela from where he came is impossible, it would last two days, he is very weak and the others would not accept him,” explains the director of the primate conservation center, the only one in Catalonia.
In fact, the reintroduction of chimpanzees that have been in captivity – mainly those that have been treated as pets for many years – to their natural habitat is not advisable.
Olga Feliu believes that Lino’s meeting with other individuals of his species will be the way to “close the circle.” A circle that, according to the director of the Riudellots center, should have been closed a long time ago, at least ten years ago, when animal rights organizations began to denounce what they considered inappropriate living conditions for the monkey that lived with its owner in a floor.
“Here we are giving him a second chance, even if he has little life left. Let’s not forget that Lino was a victim of illegal animal trafficking,” adds Feliu. The director remembers that Lino arrived in Spain when he was about six months old, taping the calf of the man who brought him from Venezuela with insulating tape, skipping all the controls at the airports in Caracas, Barajas and El Prat.
The ape is also adapting to its new diet. Boiled egg, pepper, potato, boiled carrot, lettuce, broccoli, celery, fruits such as apple or pear or banana and seeds. “A diet, with some adaptations, that can be as similar to what you could find in the jungle,” explains the head of the Mona Foundation.
Olga Feliu recognizes, on the other hand, the “shock” that the separation from María, who was his owner for so long, could have meant for him. “The first days she probably missed her, she has been her reference person,” but Feliu highlights “the impressive recovery capacity” of the primates that are rescued.