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  • From: Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Gorilla Pair at Philadelphia Zoo Break Up
  • Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 21:41:18 -0500

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/8299322.htm?1c


Gorilla Pair at Philadelphia Zoo Break Up

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Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA - Five years have passed without the pitter-patter of baby gorilla feet, and zookeepers have decided that Demba and Chaka just aren't working out. Introduced to each other five years ago at the Philadelphia Zoo amid high reproductive hopes, it's not even clear the gorillas ever mated.

That's a big change for Chaka, who had been dubbed "best stud muffin" after fathering eight little ones at Cincinnati's zoo.

"Things have not gone that way," said Andy Baker, the Philadelphia Zoo's senior vice president for animal programs.

In May, Chaka, a 380-pound silverback, will travel to Columbia, S.C., to the Riverbanks Zoo's "Gorilla Base Camp." Philadelphia's two other male gorillas, Mike and Kimya, will go with him. Demba gets to keep their Philadelphia home, and she will be joined by a troupe from the St. Louis Zoo: a toddler, his parents and another female.

The departure of 19-year-old Chaka is bittersweet to keepers because he is a link to the era before a Christmas Eve 1995 fire at the zoo that killed 23 primates, including Chaka's parents. Chaka would have likely died, too, if he wasn't on a breeding loan program in Cincinnati.

Demba and Chaka were supposed to breed and start a new dynasty of apes. Gorilla handlers were particularly hoping that Demba, whose parents were wild-born, would mate to introduce her genes into the captive population.

But Demba may have been, biologically speaking, damaged goods from early gorilla-hood. She was raised by humans and didn't meet another of her own species for years. Even then, she never seemed quite comfortable with her own kind. But keepers figured that with Chaka's past success, passion might take hold.

Now at age 33, Demba's biological clock "has pretty well ticked its last tick," said Dan Wharton, the nation's gorilla coordinator and director of the Central Park Zoo.

The two females that Chaka will be living with are younger, and one is known to be fertile.



  • [monkeywire] Gorilla Pair at Philadelphia Zoo Break Up, Josh Greenman, 03/28/2004

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