62-year-old Bornean orangutan celebrates birthday

The world’s oldest Bornean orang-utan, Gypsy Chan, goes ape on her 62nd birthday by shoving her two-year-old grandson Api’s face into her towering fruit cake.

The sweet photo at Tokyo’s Tama Zoo, Japan, by British snapper David Williams, caused tears of joy.

Scientists, writing in the journal Primates, say this is the first time an orangutan had behaved in this way and that “Orangutans spend most of their time alone in the wild. However, they sometimes come and travel together, so researchers regard them as semi-solitary.”

Earlier, Molly, the world’s oldest captive orangutan, died at the zoo in 2011. She was 59. Molly arrived at Ueno Zoological Gardens, another zoo in Tokyo, in 1955 from Indonesia and was the first orangutan in post-war Japan.

She found fame when she became an artist by drawing with crayons in 2002. Gypsy is now the world’s oldest and clearly still going strong as these pictures show.

Don’t cry during haircuts or you will be charged more!

Mums and dads are not amused by a poster which was spotted in a hair salon in an unidentified place in Australia.

Any parent knows it’s difficult to control a child’s emotions — and taking them to get their hair cut can be a bit of an ordeal if they don’t want to do it. A hairdresser has sparked outrage after putting up a sign threatening to charge customers a surplus charge for children’s haircuts if they cry.

It was reportedly spotted by a parent in Australia and posted in a mums’ community Facebook group. The poster read: “Any children that cry during a children’s haircut will result in a $10 increase in price.”

The post sparked outrage in parents who want an immediate action to be taken against the salon, however, the location of the salon is yet unknown.

10th anniversary of cat ‘stationmaster’

A Japanese railway station celebrated the tenth anniversary of its late cat ‘stationmaster’ last week.

The calico cat named Tama served as the stationmaster for Wakayama Electric Railway’s Kishi from 2007 to 2015 when she died and was commemorated with the ‘Tama Shrine.’

More than 100 fans, including the Wakayama governor and the Wakayama Electric Railway president gathered for a ceremony to remember Tama, who was credited with saving the railway from financial struggles, according to Japan Times.

The station also introduced its newest stationmaster recruit, an eight-month-old calico cat named Yontama, who will soon join the present stationmaster.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 28th, 2017