Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

monkeywire - [monkeywire] Joe the gorilla's frozen sperm may provide genetic diversity

monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>
  • To: monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Joe the gorilla's frozen sperm may provide genetic diversity
  • Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 10:53:25 -0400

Former Brownsville ape finds haven in woods
Joe the gorilla's frozen sperm may provide genetic diversity
http://www.valleystar.com/localnews_more.php?id=53352_0_19_0_M

May 22, 2004

By ELIZABETH PIERSON

When Joe the gorilla left the zoo in Brownsville more than a year ago, at least a little of him stayed behind.

After decades of captivity in which Joe showed little interest in female gorillas and never fathered a baby, a national organization responsible for monitoring the captive gorilla population is considering what to do with the frozen sperm of the Gladys Porter Zoo's former resident.

Someday, Joe's sperm might be used to impregnate a female gorilla and keep the zoo population in the United States genetically diverse, gorilla experts said.

Joe is a 41-year-old western lowland gorilla who was caught in the wild and brought to the Birmingham Zoo at a young age. Visitors to the zoo in Brownsville might remember him from the early 1990s, before illness and social problems sent him to live in the zoo clinic in the mid-1990s.

Because Joe was born in the wild, his potential children could bring genetic diversity to a U.S. zoo population that consists mostly of gorillas born in captivity, said Dan Wharton, chairman of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association's Gorilla Species Survival Plan and director of the Central Park Zoo in New York City.

Gene pool diversity isn't a serious problem in the United States, with 113 "founders," or wild-born gorillas, having contributed offspring to the captive gorilla population of 370, Wharton said.

But animal managers want to avoid a situation like they faced in the 1980s, after gorillas could no longer be taken from the wild. Concerns were raised as to whether the captive population could survive without more diversity, Wharton said.

"Whether or not we were able to reproduce Joe, we're still in very good shape," he said. "But as a matter of policy, we try not to overlook the potential of having a founder in the gene pool."

When Joe first came to the Gladys Porter Zoo in 1990, zoo officials had high hopes that he would father some babies. He had spent time before at the Denver Zoo and, before that, the Birmingham Zoo, which still owns Joe.

Zookeepers put Joe in a group with other females, but learned quickly that Joe couldn't stand his ground with other males and was scared off by dominant females, said Jenifer Chatfield, a veterinarian at Gladys Porter that worked with Joe.

"We still had another male here, and poor Joe was just horribly, horribly intimidated by any other male gorilla," Chatfield said. "He just never got that social component."

Joe's fear of other males was serious enough that even a hard stare from another male gorilla was enough to make Joe vomit, she said. It was enough to make veterinarians worry for Joe's health because he had a chronic condition that left him with a weakened immune system.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Joe's condition was serious enough for zookeepers to separate him from the other gorillas and send him to live in a separate clinic at the Gladys Porter Zoo, Chatfield said.

But Joe wasn't entirely anti-social, she said. He has an endearing personality, is caring and got along well with his caretakers, Chatfield said.

"Everybody likes company, but for Joe, it's a very complex situation, because if he were with others, literally, it was going to kill him," Chatfield said.

By early in 2003, the zoo, working with the AZAA, determined that Joe should leave. They wanted to send him to new Gorilla Haven, a sort of halfway house for gorillas that don't have a place at zoos, where he lives today.

There, he would have more individual attention and more room to roam.

But before he left, zoo officials took his sperm on more than one occasion when he was anesthetized for other procedures, Chatfield said.

Has that sperm been used in a female gorilla?

"No," Chatfield said. "It's just frozen. Still in the tank."

Eventually, the sperm taken from Joe could be used to artificially inseminate a female gorilla or to fertilize an egg in a laboratory through invitro fertilization and later implant it into a female gorilla. But female gorillas don't produce as many eggs as humans when given fertility drugs, making it difficult to perform invitro fertilization, Wharton said.

And, unlike with dairy cows or other animals, there aren't enough captive gorillas to allow for reproductive experiments, Wharton said.

So far, just one gorilla baby has been born in captivity following invitro fertilization, Wharton said. Eventually, Joe's sperm or that of the other dozen or so gorillas stored may bring another one, Wharton said.

"Ultimately, it may be useful," Wharton said. "At this point we don't yet have all the protocols worked out to use reproductive technology with gorillas reliably."

--
Carrie McLaren
WEB & GRAPHIC DESIGN
http://www.carriemclaren.com
ph: 718.398.9324
fax: 207.221.9349



  • [monkeywire] Joe the gorilla's frozen sperm may provide genetic diversity, Carrie McLaren, 05/23/2004

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page