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[Natasha Matza <natasha_primatesanctuary AT yahoo.com>]

Baby gorilla born at zoo

By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 26, 2005, 8:15 PM CDT

Good news came in a small package to Lincoln Park Zoo
Tuesday morning when keepers arrived at the apehouse
and discovered that Kowali, a 27-year-old lowland
gorilla, was holding her newborn baby.

The zoo had been expecting Kowali to give birth for
the last two weeks. She chose to do so sometime
between 5 p.m. Monday, when keepers locked the
building and went home, and 7 a.m. Tuesday, when they
arrived for work.

"The baby was already dry and cleaned off. That means
the birth probably occurred several hours earlier,"
said Andy Henderson, an apehouse supervisor who first
found Kowali at 7 a.m. She was sitting placidly in the
indoor habitat she shares with the father, Kwan, and
two other adult females, Bulera and Madini.

It was Kowali's fifth baby but the first for
16-year-old Kwan, who a few years ago was featured in
a Hollywood movie, "Return to Me" starring Minnie
Driver. The movie was partially filmed in the zoo.

"It is an important birth in that it is Kwan's first
offspring," said Sue Margulis, the zoo's curator of
primates. "There are about 360 lowland gorillas in
captivity, and it is important that genetically each
one is represented in the next generation. Now Kwan is
successfully passing on his genes."

He is younger than most zoo gorilla fathers, as zoos
usually wait until males are about 20 before they are
allowed to mate with fertile females. Kwan was given a
group of older females to lead when he first came to
the zoo at age 9, but the females were always on birth
control so they wouldn't become pregnant.

"He was just too immature to take on the duties of
being a silverback father," said Margulis.

But last year, she said, keepers thought Kwan had
begun showing maturity beyond his years. They thought
he could handle fatherhood, and they also hoped that
bringing a newborn into the loose-knit group would
draw all four of the adults into a closer bond. Taken
off birth control, Kowali became pregnant almost
immediately.

"She is doing everything she should do as a mother,"
Margulis said. "The most important thing is that she
was nursing right away, and the baby looks strong and
is grabbing well on to Kowali, so, so far everything
looks just about perfect."

Kwan also has shown all the behaviors of a responsible
gorilla father, she said. Gorilla males don't usually
take part in caring for the baby but are vigilant in
protecting the mother from other animals.

"This morning, as we do every morning, we got the
gorillas to go into their off-viewing holding area for
training. Usually we separate the adults, but this
morning Kowali wanted to stay near Kwan, so we kept
them together. He was very protective of her, shooing
away Madini, who was pestering Kowali for a look at
the baby."

Kowali keeps the baby so close to her chest that it
may take several days before keepers can get a clear
enough look at the infant to determine its sex, said
Margulis. But in the next few months, Margulis said,
Kowali likely will let Madini and Bulera help her
raise the baby.

The birth was especially good news for a zoo that has
been battered with bad publicity over a series of
animal deaths over the last year.

Among those who died was Kowali's mother, Kumba, who
in 1970 became the first captive-born gorilla at
Lincoln Park. Her death earlier this year was not
surprising, as she was relatively old by gorilla
standards and had suffered from kidney problems.

After Kumba's birth, the zoo went on to become one of
the most successful captive gorilla breeding centers
in the world. The new baby is the 47th gorilla to be
born at the zoo, representing the fourth generation of
the breeding colony.

---

wmullen AT tribune.com

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