Chimp 'safer in solitary'

Up to 600 000 people are monitoring the Jane Goodall Institute SA website to watch Nina the chimpanzee give birth online, but some of them are up in arms because she has been isolated from her troop for two months.

Nina, a nine-year-old rescued from poachers in South Sudan, is living at the Jane Goodall Institute, in Mpumalanga.

The sanctuary cannot breed chimpanzees because it does not have the space or facilities.

But Nina became pregnant only a few months after being given a contraceptive implant meant to be effective for two years.

Because staff at the institute are expecting her to give birth soon they have placed her in quarantine, away from her troop.

Last week, the National SPCA received complaints from animal lovers saying that Nina was being treated cruelly by being kept in isolation.

One person suggested that Nina was not getting enough exercise or "being taken out for a walk".

In response, SPCA wildlife manager Isabel Wentzel said Nina was wild and could not be taken on walks.

A director of the Jane Goodall Institute SA, David Devo Oosthuizen, said Nina was not being treated cruelly but had to be isolated for the safety of her newborn.

He said many of the chimpanzees at the institute had been snatched from their mothers and hand-reared. As a result, a troop would not react appropriately to a newborn chimp.

He said hand-reared chimpanzees could be very rough with a newborn and might fling them around.

"We can't put Nina back with the troop and then catch an adult male walking around with a dead baby."

Wentzel said Nina might reject her baby.

Oosthuizen said the length of Nina's pregnancy as bandied about on social media was inaccurate.

Nina was first X-rayed in November by emergency vets who assumed that she had a tumour - only to discover she was pregnant, said Wentzel.

The vets are not specialists in treating chimps and thought Nina was three months' pregnant when, in fact, she was probably about six months into gestation.

It is now thought Nina is at least eight months' pregnant and ready to give birth.

"It is not known precisely when she will go into labour," said Oosthuizen.

He said the institute's Facebook page was updated at 4pm every day with the latest information on Nina's condition.