The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://springfield.news-leader.com/news/_archive/0707-Gorillabac-127729.html

July 7, 2004 

Gorilla bachelors pose problem

St. Louis Zoo decides to care for unwanted apes and send a family unit to 
Philadelphia.

By The Associated Press
St. Louis — The St. Louis Zoo will say goodbye to a four-member gorilla 
family next week,
and try to make a new family unit out of the zoo's three unattached males.
The family of two males and two females will be loaded into specially built 
crates next
Monday and taken by truck to their new home at the Philadelphia Zoo, 
according to a
Monday St. Louis Post-Dispatch story. Officials in Philadelphia hope to use 
the gorillas
in breeding projects.

The St. Louis Zoo's primate curator, Ingrid Porton, said there just wouldn't 
be room for
all seven of the zoo's gorillas — despite an expanded gorilla habitat in the 
Fragile
Forest exhibit due to open next year,

So zoo officials had to make a difficult choice: Send away Jabari, Kivu, Nne 
(pronounced
En-nay) Kizazi and Louis, or send away the three single males.

Choosing what they thought was right over what might have been more popular, 
zoo
officials decided to send the family elsewhere and keep the unattached males.

That means the zoo will lose some of its best loved ambassadors, including 
the youngest
gorilla, Louis, who was born at the zoo five years ago. But they will gain a 
chance to
focus attention and resources on the male "bachelors," an often neglected 
segment of the
captive gorilla population.

"I feel that we have an ethical obligation to care for these boys," said ape 
zookeeper
Terri Hunnicutt. "No one wants them."

Porton said most zoos prefer family groups — consisting of a dominant 
Silverback male,
several females, and perhaps at least one young ape.

But there are far more unattached males than family groups. Western lowland 
gorilla
family groups call for a single male overseeing several females. The bachelor 
males don't
often get along with each other, and can serve as a distraction to gorilla 
families
living in the same quarters. Most zoos struggle to find out what to do with 
the singles.

But the St. Louis Zoo was one of the first to work with groups of unattached 
males. They
became the first zoo to create a family group out of bachelors in the late 
1980's.
Gorillas are extremely social, and experts believe such a grouping is 
beneficial to the
males, who would ordinarily live on the fringes of gorilla society.

The zoo is hoping to create such a grouping for their males — Mshindi, Juma 
and Rafiki.
For now, they are being kept separate.

Rafiki — named for the baboon in Disney's "Lion King" — has been at the zoo 
since the
early 1990's, when he was sent by England's Jersey Zoo to be the Silverback 
leader of the
zoo's existing family. But Jubari took that job.

Porton said the zoo could add two more males if this grouping goes well. But 
there are no
plans to add any more families.

The goodbye won't be any easier than the decision. But keeper Hunnicutt 
thinks the zoo is
doing the right thing.

"Sometimes I think you just have to stick by what you believe," Hunnicutt 
said. "And what
we believe is we have to care for these bachelors."