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[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

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