ASHEBORO -- The N.C. Zoological Park will soon have a new attraction that could increase attendance by as many as 100,000 visitors in the first year.
"The zoo is expecting a baby gorilla," David Jones, the zoo's director, said with pride Wednesday.
Jones made the announcement outside the zoo's gorilla exhibit, with Nkosi, the father-to-be, riffling through piles of hay looking for hidden snacks on the other side of the viewing window. The expectant mother, Jamani, noodled about in the back of the enclosure, seeming reluctant to show the press her emergent baby bump.
Baby anythings are popular zoo attractions, and infant primates are especially charismatic. Visitors continue to linger at the zoo's chimpanzee exhibit and stare adoringly at Nori, the still-tiny chimp baby born in August.
Since it opened in the 1970s, the N.C. Zoo has had only one other birth among its rotating troops of Western lowland gorillas: Kwanza, who arrived amid great fanfare to parents Hope and Carlos in March 1989.
About a half dozen baby gorillas are born each year in zoos in North America, mostly under the auspices of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan. The plan is a program of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association aimed at improving the captive care and breeding of gorillas, which are considered "critically endangered." There are about 350 gorillas in 52 North American zoos.
The Kwanza effect
Over the years, at least 14 gorillas have been moved into and out of the N.C. Zoo to try to improve the chances of reproduction here and elsewhere. But while other zoos have seen dozens of new babies arrive, North Carolina has had none since Kwanza.
In the year after Kwanza's birth, the zoo saw an additional 80,000 visitors. Families who had babies born on the same day would bring their children to see the young gorilla for years afterward, until he was moved to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo in 2005. He has since become a father himself.
Jones, who has been involved in zoos for more than four decades, recalls when getting a new gorilla was a $100,000 to $200,000 purchase, and zoos competed for them. Now, he said, zoos cooperate for the sake of the species, whose populations have declined along with their forest habitat in equatorial Africa, which has been lost to mining, logging and clear-cutting.
The Species Survival Plan called for Nkosi and Jamani to mate, but Terry Webb, mammal curator for the zoo, said it's not that easy. Gorillas are among humans' closest relatives and share some of our romantic idiosyncrasies. They cast suggestive glances, which they like to have returned, and they flirt. Apparently, they have to like each other.
And, as with human pregnancies, "There's a certain amount of luck in all this," said Jones, the director.
Due date this summer
Webb said zookeepers suspected Jamani was pregnant as far back as December, and got positive readings several months in a row on pregnancy tests, using urine collected from her indoor quarters. Gradually, zoo workers got Jamani accustomed to the various elements required for an ultrasound and were finally able to conduct one to see a fetus.
Jamani is about 5 1/2 months along, according to veterinarians' calculations. She's expected to deliver between late July and late August.
So far, Webb said, Jamani hasn't gained a lot of weight and hasn't changed her behavior, except for being a little slower to enter the habitat in the mornings.
Jones said the zoo will monitor Jamani closely and may install cameras to more carefully observe her and the infant, once it is born. It is usually obvious within the first 24 hours whether the mother will nurse and nurture the baby, Jones said.
Before coming to the N.C. Zoo, Jamani was around a number of youngsters, he said.
"If mom does well and the baby does well, they could be on exhibit within a few weeks after the birth," Jones said.
While the zoo's polar bears, in the North America section, have been the top draw in recent years, a bouncing baby gorilla could bring crowds back to the Africa section, where the zoo started.
"That will immediately become the No. 1 attraction," Jones said.
