Trentham Monkey Forest, in Staffordshire likes to give their monkeys everything. They want the population to grow and will go to some extreme lengths to encourage them to breed. Nice candlelit dinners, flowers from “your secret admirer,” and now apparently a Marvin Gaye impersonator.
“David, a highly experienced love song guru, sang several Marvin Gaye classics to the monkeys whilst in amongst them, and they seemed very relaxed and full of love,” said a spokesperson for the zoo. “Some classic Barbary macaque ‘lovey dovey’ behaviour was on display during the performance such as grooming and teeth chattering. Who knows? Maybe there’s something in it and the park will have a record number of babies come the summer.”
Barbary Macaque monkeys have been declared an endangered species since 2008. Their habitat has suffered from logging and along with illegal pet trading and them being shot as retaliation from raiding crops, their numbers have plummeted. Trentham Monkey Forest houses around 140 Barbary Macaques and they live like they would in the wild and have free range over the entire zoo.
