For the truck driver, the most interesting part of the strange road trip came on Interstate Highway 65 in Indiana, when Frank, a Lincoln Park Zoo gorilla, began beating his chest and barking from inside his packing crate.
It was otherwise an unremarkable trip from Chicago to Louisville, except that it was made by six lowland gorillas.
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The gorillas, a group headed by the gentle male silverback Frank, spent their first full day Thursday as the inaugural residents of the Kentucky zoo’s impressive new ape facility, Gorilla Forest.
Louisville is supposed to provide a magnificent temporary abode for Frank and his family while Lincoln Park’s Lester Fisher Great Ape House, their home since it was constructed in 1977, is torn down late this year. A new facility is to open in 2005.
The reality, however, is that three of the family members, Frank, 38, Debbie, 36, and Helen, 44, are elderly by gorilla standards. By the time the new gorilla residence in Lincoln Park is ready, they may either be dead or too frail to come home.
It was a stroke of luck that Louisville Zoo is just finishing a 4-acre, indoor/outdoor gorilla facility designed for two gorilla families.
“We could have split up our families, sending individuals off to various zoos around the country,” said Lincoln Park Zoo director Kevin Bell, “but Louisville came along with this beautiful new facility, allowing us to move them intact.”
The most dangerous part of the move was sedating each of the gorillas Wednesday morning. Old animals, in particular, can sometimes slip away under anesthesia.
After undergoing a complete physical while asleep, the gorillas were placed into individual, metal-and-wood shipping crates–each not much bigger than a refrigerator box–stuffed with straw. They were placed on three trucks, two to a truck.
Separation anxiety
Two of the young females, sisters Rollie, 5, and Mumbali, 4, who have been in Debbie’s care since they were infants, cried at first as they woke up discovering they were separated from each other and their mother.
They and the others, including another pre-adolescent female, settled down once on the road, though Frank’s barking and chest beating startled the driver in his truck, a Louisville UPS trucking supervisor who volunteered, said Robyn Barbiers, Lincoln Park’s head veterinarian.
They came off the trucks remarkably composed six hours later.”They came walking right out,” Barbiers said, “like they had been here already. Every one of them began to climb through the holding facilities, examining everything and settled right in, arranging straw beds. They’re adapting amazingly well.”
Tearful send-off
Several Lincoln Park staffers shed tears Wednesday as they helped place the anesthetized animals into the crates. The human emotion was a tribute to how important the three old gorillas have been not just to Lincoln Park but to the history of zoo gorillas everywhere.
“We want all of them back in Chicago,” said Barbiers, “and we expect all of them to come back, but you simply can’t predict the future, especially with elderly individuals.”
The three gorillas are the last surviving members of Lincoln Park’s “founders” group. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the zoo purchased nine wild-born gorilla babies in Africa and brought them to Chicago with the intention of establishing a captive gorilla breeding program.
To date, it has resulted in 44 captive births, making it one of the most successful gorilla breeding programs anywhere in the world. Lincoln Park gorillas and their offspring make up nearly 10 percent of the captive gorilla population in North America.
Debbie, Helen and Frank have been among the most prominent players in the breeding program.
Helen, an imperious, independent female, accounts for 10 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Frank, though he is a shrimp by male gorilla standards and suffers from a gimpy knee, has always been adored by the females who have come in and out of his harem through the years.
Model father
He has been a model father not only to his own offspring, but also to orphans sired by other males, gently welcoming terrified youngsters by picking them up and placing them on his broad back for a piggyback ride.
Debbie, who is infertile and could not reproduce, has probably been the most valuable individual in the group because of her affinity to both gorilla and human children.
About a quarter of the zoo-born gorillas have to be removed from their families as infants to be hand-reared by humans, either because their mother or father rejected them, or because they have suffered a serious illness or injury.
Because of their proximity to humans, the animals come to believe they are human and become terrified of other gorillas.
When it has been time for those orphans to leave human society and rejoin their own kind, Lincoln Park has always placed them in Debbie’s care.
She has raised 10 foster babies. At first the youngsters usually bite and scratch her out of distress and she patiently withstands their attacks.
Eventually, the youngsters come to love and trust her as their mother and, through her, they have joined Frank’s family as full-fledged gorillas.
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Human connection
Moreover, Debbie has delighted tens of thousands of visitors at Lincoln Park’s ape house because of her interaction with human toddlers.
She often stationed herself at the giant viewing windows where humans and apes can meet nearly nose-to-nose.
She paid special attention to toddlers on the other side of the glass, seeming to take particular delight at Halloween as she examined the costumes of the hundreds of youngsters who trooped by.
“We have learned a lot about gorillas and how we should care for them through this facility,” said Bell. “Not only have we been able to share what we have learned with zoos all over the country, we have gorillas who were born and raised here now living and breeding in zoos all over.”
Frank left behind three adult females and two youngsters who late this week will be introduced to a young silverback male, JoJo, 22, recently moved to Lincoln Park to establish a new breeding group.
JoJo’s family and a group of chimpanzees will remain on public display at Lincoln Park until October or November. JoJo’s family will then move to the Louisville zoo as well.
Lincoln Park is looking for a zoo that can take its chimp group intact.