How gorillas of the myths became fixtures in our zoos

THIS week’s tragic shooting of a rare gorilla which grabbed a young boy after he fell into its enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo, is the latest example of how caging wild beasts can go badly wrong.

Harambe the gorilla was shot dead after a four-year-old boy fell into an enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. Source: YouTube

The tragic shooting of a rare gorilla which grabbed a young boy after he fell into its enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo, is the latest example of how caging wild beasts can go badly wrong.

The rare silverback gorilla, acting on instinct, began dragging the child around, provoking the drastic action by zoo staff.

It was in stark contrast to the story of Binti, the female gorilla at Brookfield Zoo outside of Chicago, who in 1996 saved a young boy after he fell more than 7m into her enclosure. Binti protected the boy and later handed him over to her keepers. It was a sign of the gentler side of these fearsome creatures.

Human interaction with gorillas goes back centuries. Possibly the earliest account comes from 5BC. A Carthaginian explorer known as Hanno the Navigator landed on an island in a lake populated by hairy people, which their interpreters called “gorillae” (a word that was often used interchangeably with chimps). The group consisted of more females than males. Unable to capture any of the males, Hanno and his crew caught some females but the creatures struggled so much that the Carthaginians killed them, taking their skins back to Carthage.

Binti Jua, the female at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, with the child who fell into the gorilla exhibit in 1996. The gorilla also protected the sobbing child from other gorillas, while waiting for help.

The stories and legends of hairy people in the jungles of Africa persisted for centuries. In an account published in 1625, an English seaman Andrew Battel, captured by the Portuguese in Africa, heard stories of the large, hairy, human-like “monster” he called Pongo, which evaded capture because they were so strong.

The gorilla moved from rumour, myth and legend into the realm of fact when American physician and missionary in Africa, Thomas Staughton Savage, acquired skulls and skeletons of gorillas. He returned to America in 1847 and in a lecture to the Boston Society of Natural History first described the animal he named troglodytes gorilla.

A poster for Ringling Bros gorilla named Gargantua from the 1930s.

In the 1850s French-American zoologist Paul du Chaillu became the first European or American to see the gorilla alive in the wild. His stories inspired film director and producer Merian C. Cooper when he produced King Kong in 1933.

Many attempts were made to capture gorillas in the wild and to export them to the rest of the world. The first successful export was in 1876, when German Julius Falkenstein acquired a young gorilla from a Portuguese trader and took it back to Berlin to sell to the Berlin Aquarium for scientific purposes, stopping in England on the way to show off his prize. The ape, named Pongo or M’Pungu, only lived for a short time before dying of a bowel inflammation.

Soon every zoo in Europe was trying to import their own gorilla but while Berlin, Paris and London took delivery of living specimens most died within months, sometimes weeks. Dresden Zoo proudly boasted it had acquired a gorilla in 1873 but it turned out to be a chimpanzee. Acquired in 1897 Breslau Zoo’s ape Pussi lived until 1904.

Eventually zoos worked out how to look after their gorillas and some of them became long-term residents. One of the most famous early gorillas was Alfred, who arrived at the Bristol Zoo in 1930 and survived until 1948.

He was later stuffed and put on display in Bristol City Museum.

In 1956 a group of university students stole the ape as a prank, but he was later returned to his case in the museum.

In the ’30s and ’40s Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey Circus exhibited a fearsome-looking gorilla named Gargantua, which had been acquired from a sea captain. The traumatised gorilla was scarred by acid after a run-in with a crewman on a ship. Displayed in specially designed, airconditioned cage, Gargantua is credited with putting the circus back in the black.

Twelve-year old male silverback Otana, which attacked a female gorilla at the Melbourne Zoo last year. Picture: Jake Nowakowski.

The world’s first birth of a gorilla in captivity took place in 1956 at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio.

At first named Cuddles, she was later renamed Colo and is still living today, the oldest gorilla in captivity.

Australia’s first gorilla, King Kong, arrived at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo in 1959, thanks to the efforts of Sir Edward Hallstrom, president of the Taronga Park Trust, who went to the US with a gift of koalas for American zoos.

Sir Edward Hallstrom, philanthropist and naturalist, with King Kong in 1959.

The gorilla came from the estate of Aloysius “Trader” Horn, the famous big game hunter. He helped acquire more gorillas in the ’60s.

Melbourne Zoo acquired its first gorillas in 1980 from Taronga and in 1984 the first successful gorilla IVF birth in the world took place there with the male Mzuri. Last year the zoo made headlines when 33-year-old gorilla
Julia died from injuries sustained in an attack by a dominant young male silverback, Otana

Originally published as How gorillas of the myths became fixtures in our zoos