Baby gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo has many mothers, some with moustaches
A baby gorilla born in Texas and brought too the Cincinnati Zoo is being cared for by a team of seven to 10 people who dress in all black, put on hairy vests, and make guttural sounds to impersonate the baby gorilla's mother after its real mother did not look after it.
Ron Evans, Primate Center Team Leader at the zoo in Cincinnati, laying with a baby gorilla named Gladys the way a mother Western Lowland Gorilla would with her young. The baby gorilla was born Jan. 29 at a Texas zoo to a first-time mother who wouldn't care for her. Zoo workers and volunteers are acting as surrogate mothers to prepare the baby to be introduced to two female gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo who might accept her.
Associated Press
Cincinnati
Some zoo workers in Cincinnati are going ape over a baby gorilla.
They are wearing all-black outfits, grunting affectionately, and generally imitating mother gorillas to help the month-old baby adjust to a new home and get ready for a surrogate mother. Later, they will don hairy vests and carry baby Gladys on their backs, put on kneepads and gloves to move around like a gorilla, and they might knuckle-walk and climb a tree with baby on board.
Even though some of Gladys's mamas have beards and moustaches, they are trying to give her a mother's love, as much like a gorilla as they are able. They cuddle her, let her hang on them or squirm in their laps, lie down next to her, and talk to her with different guttural sounds.
"Whatever a gorilla mom would do with her baby is what we have to do with this baby," said Ron Evans, the zoo's primate team leader and one of Gladys's human surrogates. "Everything that we can do ... obviously, I'm not producing milk."
He's heading a team of seven to 10 people who work in shifts of eight hours or so to provide the baby with 24-hour companionship. She came from the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, where she was born Jan. 29 to a first-time mother who showed little maternal instinct. Zoo employees Jerry and Cindy Stones — the baby was named Gladys Stones on Friday — bottle-fed and cared for her there.
The zoos agreed it was best to move her to Cincinnati, where two experienced mother gorillas are available to serve as surrogates. Over the years, 48 gorillas have been successfully born live at Cincinnati.
