Monkey Business!

How do you feel about not having received any financial help?

In a way, people are always “waiting for help” – that’s the problem with this crisis. The way I look at things is that the only place you find “success” before (a lot of hard) “work”, is in the dictionary! We are growing here from the money that people pay as they come through the doors – and really, all that is important in the end, is that we continue to grow.

But are zoos really necessary? There are people who think it is cruel to keep animals in captivity.

In a perfect world there would be no need for zoos - but we aren’t in a perfect world. We are in a world gone completely mad. Habitats are being destroyed; animals are being driven into extinction and zoos - the right kind - are these days much more like havens: places where animals and their gene pools can be preserved. In some instances, animals that are extinct on the outside can be bred in zoos and released back into the wild - if conditions are right. These days, the average life-span of an orangutan, for example, in the wild is around 10 years because they are victim to all sorts of problems, like the decimation of the forests where they live, etc. In a zoo, they can live very happily for more than 40 years.

Do you have any new attractions?

Yes, we have the Flying Foxes; the dwarf crocodiles, the hippos and Lucas – the new male chimpanzee, who has come to join our females.We’ve also come up with an idea to keep things “busy”. We’re offering a special €30 pass for one year – so that people can easily afford to come back again and again.

You get a lot of return visitors. Why?

A mixture of things. First of all, people love the feel of the place. I don’t believe in holding “shows”, as this seems so artificial - but what we do instead is orchestrate moments. For example, we have “ice cream time” for the capuchin monkeys. We make them ice-creams out of frozen fruit and ice, and because they are very much like humans in the way they act, it can be very funny watching them eat their ice-creams. In a way, much funnier than anything staged – because each animal has its own personality; its own way of getting to the fruit and enjoying it!

Do you ever get tired running all this (the zoo is attached to Paulo’s rural “O Cangalho” restaurant)?

Something must have been under strain as I had a heart-attack earlier this month! They asked me at the hospital if I had a lot of stress, and I said “no, I live in a paradise and love what I do!”. In the end, it was all because I smoked way too much and drank black coffee all day long. I’ve had to change things now.

How many days were you away from work?

They kept me in the hospital for 3 days, so it was 3 days…