New orang-utan baby born at Basel Zoo
A new baby orang-utan has become the second to be born at Basel Zoo since the ape house was rebuilt.
The baby boy, named Ombak, was born on 4th March, zoo vet Fabia Wyss told the media on Wednesday. Omak is the first to be born to 17-year-old Kila who had joined five other orang-utans in the new ape house in 2012.
Despite becoming a mother for the first time, Kila is nevertheless experienced in raising young ones. When her mother died eight years ago, she “adopted“ her then two-year-old sister, Maia. It is probably the reason why she had to wait so long herself to become a mother. Orang-utan females are sexually mature from the age of eight and throughout their lives they give birth to only three or four babies.
Ombak will be dependent on his mother’s milk for the next six or seven years. Since Orang-utans are solitary creatures in their adult lives, the role of the mother is as “a source of knowledge“. In the wild, a mother teaches her babies how to find food in the trees and how to identify different plant species in order that they can survive as adults. Orang-utans have the longest childhood dependence on their mothers of any animal in the world, simply because they have so much to learn. The males stay with their mother until they are around ten and the females remain close into their teens to learn mothering skills.
Necessary paternity test
It remains unclear who had fathered Ombak. Kila shares an enclosure with three males – 15-year-old Bagus, Vendel (17), and Budi (13). Kila was highly desired by the males, Mr Wyss said.
He said the zoo will carry out a paternity test to determine who the father is. The details of Ombak’s DNA make-up are important for the orang-utan breeding programme, which Basel Zoo takes part in. Orang-utans are passed on to other zoos once they are fully mature.
Ombak is the second Orang-utan offspring in the zoo since the ape house was re-built. The first, Ketawa, was born four years ago. Her mother Revital was already pregnant when she arrived from France. From1990 until Ketawa was born, there were no orang-utans born in Basel.
The orang-utans in Basel come from Sumatra, where they face extinction in many regions due to deforestation and loss of habitat. In total, 14,000 apes live in the north of the island. Since 2010, Basel has supported an orang-utan protection project in Borneo which fights for the protection of the rainforest in north-eastern Malaysia.
“Palatable Haute Couture“: Fashion and Chocolate eggs at “kleinbasel“
For the last 18 years in the heart of Kleinbasel, Wencke Schmid has created small and large masterpieces from a hundred-year-old bakery. Her tarts and petits fours, decorated with chocolate, marzipan, and sugar, have become legendary.
Her creations can be bought at Globus, So‘up, Buy Local (Feldbergstrasse), the Zum Schmale Wurf pub, at the kultkino as well as at other outlets. Together with her friend Tanja Klein, who owns the “kleinbasel by Tanja Klein“ fashion shop, Ms Schmid came up with an idea to create chocolate eggs in the colours of the summer collection. Gold, silver, blue or yellow: The eggs are real gems, or as Ms Schmid describes them, “Haute Couture for the palate“. The Lindt-chocolate used in these eggs is shaped by a machine provided by Schmid‘s friend and mentor, chocolatier Ruedi Berner.
The two businesswomen had the idea for a collaboration during a meal one evening. “At some point we said that the swimming pool clothing collection at the shop could fit well with chocolate Easter eggs,“ said Ms Schmid in an interview with barfi.ch at her bakery in Oetlingerstrasse. She started to produce Easter eggs only last year, and in the beginning they looked very different to how they look today. The tart artist especially loves the complete form of the egg.
Apart from the regular deliveries to her customers, most tart orders are commissioned, with special requirements for birthdays, weddings, or anniversaries. “My customers get a better result when they give me some freedom, I am much more creative when they just let me work,“ Ms Schmid said. The cost is rendered not according to hours or square centimetres, but according to her customers.
Wencke Schmid said she has no plans to expand to other cities like her friend Tanja Klein, who has expanded to Zurich and recently to Bern. She already has regular customers in Zurich and has delivered her creations to all branches of Globus. In hindsight, however, she wants to remain local: “I believe that local undertakings have a future,“ she said.
Alleged bicycle thieves stopped at the border
Three people have been arrested in connection with alleged bike thefts in Basel. The group was stopped at the French border a few days ago by Swiss border guards.
During an inspection at the Basel-Hüningerstrasse border crossing, a car with French number plates with two women and one man caught the eye of the border guards.
The border guards found two bicycles, one of which was locked, as well as clothes and two bags full of cosmetics. One of the bicycles was locked and the clothes still had labels on them. Neither the female driver nor the passengers had receipts for the items or a key for the bicycle lock.
There were hints that the bicycles had come from Switzerland. Because of the implausible reasons given about the origin of the bicycles, the border guards suspected that they may have been stolen.
The driver, a 25-year-old French citizen, and the passengers, a 23-year-old man from Kosovo and a 19-year-old French woman, were handed over to the cantonal police of Basel-Stadt. The Basel prosecution has started criminal proceedings against them.
It comes after a similar incident several weeks ago in which two allegedly stolen bicycles were detected by a patrol of border guards in the Bachgraben area.