Monkey see, monkey do: Gibbon who has been blind since infancy is given the gift of sight by Kansas vets who performed life-changing cataract surgery on the ape
- Booger, a two-year-old ape, will see for the first time in years after an eye surgery
- The Gibbon was was given her eyesight back by Kansas vets on Thursday
- She lives at Monkey Island in Greenwood, Missouri, an animal sanctuary
- A Gibbon is a species of ape found in the dense forests of southern Asia
A Gibbon who has been blind since infancy received the gift of sight from Kansas vets who performed the life-changing cataract surgery.
Booger is a two-year-old ape who will be able to see for the first time in years after the animal underwent a rare operation to restore her sight on Thursday in Manhattan, Kansas.
The surgery was a first for veterinarian ophthalmologists at Kansas State University, who performed the successful surgery on the primate, and Booger is expected to see after a few weeks of recovery.
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Booger, a two-year-old Gibbon, (pictured) will be able to see for the first time in years after the animal underwent a rare operation to restore her sight on Thursday in Manhattan, Kansas
The ape lives at Monkey Island in Greenwood, Missouri, an animal sanctuary run by her owner Dana Saverelli, who said he thinks jaundice was the cause of Booger's cataracts, causing her blindness, reports KSHB and 41 Action News.
Saverlli's sanctuary houses a host of Gibbons, which is a species of lesser apes commonly found in the dense forests of southern Asia and they largely stay up in the trees.
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They are slender, agile and have long arms, perfect from swinging from trees where they are reluctant to come down from, according to National Geographic.
Cataract surgeries on primates are extremely rare. For animals, they are mostly performed on cats and dogs.
Vets at Kansas State University performed the extremely rare cataract surgery on the ape
Her owner Dana Saverelli (pictured) said he thinks jaundice was the cause of Booger's cataracts, causing her blindness as an infant
Dr. Jessica Meekins, who performed the surgery said to 41 Action News: 'We can actually see cataract development specifically when we see Gibbons and non-human primates or exotics taken from their wild habitats and brought into a domesticated habitat.
'She had gone beyond having a complete cataract to the point where her body was actually starting to react to the cataract and essentially melt it away.'
A cataract is a medical condition in which the lens of the eye becomes progressively opaque, resulting in blurred vision. They mostly develop slowly over years and the main symptom is blurry vision.
Saverelli runs an animal sanctuary at Monkey Island in Greenwood, Missouri, where there are several other Gibbon apes
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