Notts woman enters record books after becoming surrogate mother to orphaned monkey

A NOTTS woman has entered the record books after becoming a surrogate mother to an orphaned monkey.

Andrea Donaldson rescued the two-week old Angolan colobus monkey in January after she was found by hotel staff.

The monkey, who is called Betsy, had been abandoned by the rest of the troop.

Miss Donaldson, a 33-year-old conservationist from Mansfield has looked after Betsy ever since and has kept her alive for 81 days – the longest time an Angolan colobus has ever survived away from the wild.

At first Miss Donaldson, who now lives in Diani, Kenya, kept Betsy inside a sarong wrapped across her chest to replicate the warmth she would have received from her natural mother.

The monkey is fed a diet of 50 per cent goats milk and 50 per cent solids, made up of wild leaves and flowers.

Miss Donaldson, who runs a conservation charity The Colobus Trust, which monitors the endangered colobus population, also uses droppings from female monkeys to provide Betsy the bacteria she would have received from her mother's milk in the wild.

Despite the level of care she is receiving Betsy's life remains in peril.

When Betsy is six-months-old, Miss Donaldson hopes they will be able to integrate her into a troop and find a mother to nurture her.

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