Toys for Gibbons, 2024 International Gibbon Day Event

On the occasion of the International Gibbon Day 2024, Shanghai Roots & Shoots continues to cooperate with Shanghai Zoo to carry out a series of activities entitled “Toys for Gibbons”. We take this opportunity to call for public attention and protection of the endangered gibbon species. It’s the fourth year Shanghai Zoo and Shanghai Roots & Shoots held this event together since 2021. On October 19^th at Shanghai Zoo, more than 2,000 visitors were attracted to take part in colorful gibbon-themed activities including enrichment toy exhibition, interactive Q&A, expert lecture and so on.

Ｉｎ September, the students formed their own team, and participated in an training to learn about enrichment of gibbons and observed them at Shanghai Zoo. They completed the design and production of enrichment toys by themselves during a month. A total of 15 teams made 18 enrichment toys for gibbons on October 19^th. Nearly 100 students displayed their toys on the front lawn of Shanghai Zoo Science Education Center on that day, inviting visitors to vote for their toys and conducting fun interactive games to help the visitors to learn about gibbons. 

According to the combined result of visitors’ votes and scores given by gibbon keepers, Shanghai Guanghua Cambridge International School won the first prize, Shanghai Luhang Middle School North School came the second, and Shanghai Wenlai Experimental School took the third place. 

While the “Toys for Gibbons” exhibition was in full swing, interactive games and the expert lecture on gibbons also attracted many visitors. They have learnt more about gibbons through participating in all kinds of interactive games such as identifying the differences between gibbons and monkeys, finding out gibbons’ habitat, gibbon-themed Q&A, and primate behavior mimicry challenge etc. 

In the Science Education Center, Doctor Ma, from Sun Yat-Sen University told the stories of three generations ‘scientists studying on Cao Vit Gibbon, how they conducted the research and what it was like doing research on the field. Dr. Ma then introduced his focus, studying the vocal structure and sequence of Cao Vit Gibbon, as well as how these findings will help to solve the mysteries of origin and evolution of language. The scientists are keep trying to reveal the secrets of gibbons to more, and thus involve more to protect the gibbons together. 

With the joint efforts from every school group and their one-month-long learning and preparing , the event was brought to a successful end.  conclusion. The teams created a number of eye-catching toys for us and gibbons on the occasion of the International Gibbon Day 2024, which won the applause of the visitors and experts.

We sincerely thank Shanghai Zoo for supporting this event! And we deeply appreciate that all the school teams actively participated in this campaign event and all the volunteers assisted at the event too!