HE may have been rejected by his mother, but Odo the baby gibbon is certainly melting the hearts of plenty of others.

Odo, a white-handed gibbon, tipped the scales at just over 500 grams when he was born at Flamingo Land Zoo, near Pickering, North Yorkshire, just over a month ago.

But while the zoo's staff were entranced by the new arrival, his mother certainly was not and wanted nothing more to do with the waif.

So the call went out for surrogate parents and zoo-keepers Sam de Belle and Jamie Tapper immediately stepped forward.

The couple, who have been partners for nearly three years, now take Odo home every night and care for him as if he was their own baby.

Because of his tender age he needs to be bottle fed every two hours - and yesterday gave further cause for celebration when he took his first few bites of a banana, even though he's still teething.

Odo had grown so attached to Sam and Jamie that when he was put to bed for the night, with his cuddly stuffed camel, he started to cry and screech.

So after many hours of walking around trying to console him, the couple have now allowed him to sleep in their bed - a move which proved an instant success and Odo has been sleeping there peacefully ever since.

Sam, 29, said: "Odo has definitely brought Jamie and I closer together.

"We share the feeding shifts between us.

The joy we have got from caring for Odo has also brought out our parental instincts - we're both sure our home will hear the patter of tiny feet of a different kind very soon."

Odo is the first gibbon to be born at Flamingo Land since 1994, following the recent introduction of a combined zoo breeding programme.