A red-haired Hamadryas baboon has been born at the Safari Park in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, in Israel for the first time in 20 years.
A 20-year-old baboon named Scud gave birth to the rare red-haired female at the end of January.
"It is the first time we've had a red-haired born in more than 20 years, but the red-haired gene is related to the albino gene that has been in our group since the 1950s," said curator Amelia Terkel.
She said the gene originated with a group of Hamadryas baboons that came with the immigration of Jews from Yemen in early 1950s, on what was called the Magic Carpet - an operation that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new State of Israel between June 1949 and September 1950.
British and US transport aircraft made some 380 flights from Aden in a secret operation that was not made public until several months after it was over.
"They brought these white baboons which were their pets and they were donated to the old Tel Aviv Zoo and this white gene remained through the males, the line of males," Terkel said.
The new arrival spends most of her time hanging on to her mother as she walks around the enclosure.
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