Workers at a conservation park in Stoke-on-Trent have hit upon an interesting way to spur on the revival of an endangered species, by hiring a Marvin Gaye impersonator to help encourage the animals to mate.
The ingenious experiment was put to the test at Trentham Monkey Forest, which is home to 140 Barbary macaques – a species of monkey most commonly found in Northern Africa and Gibraltar.
In an effort to encourage the monkeys to procreate, conservationists at the forest decided on the unorthodox approach of hiring a singer to replicate the late great soul singer's sultry tones, in an effort to see whether classics like Let's Get It On and Sexual Healing could actually help the macaques 'get it on'.
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Marking the end of this year's official mating season for the animals, The Mirror reports that Motown balladeer David Largie was brought to the park in order to serenade the monkeys with a variety of sexy songs, with park director Matt Lovatt explaining the idea was a 'creative way to encourage our females to show a little affection to males that might not have been so lucky in love'.
While its not immediately clear whether Largie's crooning inspired any of the macaques, the gestation period of the females is only around six months, so come the summer the park will hope to see lots of baby Barbarys swinging through the trees.
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'Females in season mate with several males so paternity amongst our furry residents is never known,' Lovatt explained.
Barbary macaques have been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) since 2009, with one of the main threats to the population in the wild being their popularity in the illegal pet trade.
According to conservationists, as many as 300 baby Barbarys are taken from the wild each year to be sold as pets, with many of the macaques in the Monkey Forest and other zoos having been rescued from illegal traders.
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'The beauty of Monkey Forest is that our monkeys are living in huge, naturally occurring groups, with a hierarchy and all those natural dynamics you would find in a wild population which is hard to achieve in a zoo,' Lovatt explained. 'The monkeys born at Monkey Forest stay at Monkey Forest, they get to spend their entire lives with their families, with their friends, which is completely unique in that sense.'
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Hannah Smith