Keepers arriving for work at Lincoln Park Zoo’s new African ape house at 7 a.m. Monday were surprised to find somebody who hadn’t been there when the building was locked up the night before.
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Bahati, a 14-year-old female lowland gorilla, was holding a new baby. The birth was not a surprise, but it was a landmark event: the first birth in the new ape house, the $25.7 million Regenstein Center for African Apes, which opened July 4.
The baby, whose sex has not yet been determined, weighs about 5 pounds, say keepers. It is the 46th gorilla birth at the zoo, which runs one of the world’s most successful captive gorilla breeding programs in the world.
Keepers knew Bahati was pregnant when she and her family group moved back to Chicago last spring from the Louisville Zoo, where they had stayed during construction of the new ape house.
Bahati had shown no signs of going into labor when keepers closed the ape house at 5 p.m. Sunday. Keepers think the baby was born very early Monday, in the presence of her father, JoJo, 25, and the rest of JoJo’s family, five other adult females and a 9-month-old male, Azizi.
Among the hallmarks of good gorilla breeding programs are keeping animals in stable, natural family groupings, like JoJo’s, in surroundings the animals feel comfortable in.
Zoo officials said Monday they hope the birth portends the future success of the new building.
“We are very pleased to see Bahati exhibiting all the natural gorilla mothering behaviors,” said Robyn Barbiers, the zoo’s general curator.
“She is very relaxed. The baby is nursing, and Bahati is holding the other animals at bay. They are all curious, especially Azizi, but she [Bahati] is keeping the rest of them at a distance for now, allowing them to watch but not touch.”
Keepers will keep a close watch for several days for any sign that the baby is not receiving sufficient nourishment from nursing, or that Bahati isn’t showing proper maternal care.
“If the baby cries a lot and obviously isn’t gaining weight, we’d be suspicious that something is wrong, and we’d consider intervening, Barbiers said. “But Bahati, who was a fine mother with her first baby, seems to be doing everything right with this one.”
Zoo officials hope the new building will be at least as effective in providing the environment that made the old ape house such a prolific gorilla breeding facility, the site of 36 gorilla births. Both parents of the new baby were born there.
The zoo has had an international reputation for its gorilla collection ever since it brought in the legendary Bushman, considered for years by the world’s zookeepers to be the finest zoo animal in the world.
Bushman, who grew up to be the largest gorilla in captivity, arrived as a wild-caught infant in 1930, residing at the zoo until his death in 1951. A succession of other gorillas that were caught in the wild lived at the zoo until director Lester Fisher in the 1960s improvised larger family holding areas in the primate house, putting several females with a single, dominant male silverback, hoping they would breed.
In 1970, Kumba, a female who is now a Lincoln Park senior citizen, was the zoo’s first gorilla born in the primate house.
Eight more were born in the primate house before a facility to house great ape family groupings, the old circular underground ape house, was custom built in 1976.