Gorillas versus Monkeys in mixed exibits.

[Pertinax]

He may not have eaten the monkey though, he might've just bitten him out of aggression and infected blood would still have passed into his system...

CZ Jimmy- as usual you are exactly on the ball...

He deliberately caught & killed the monkey- being in a confined space it was probably fairly easy or he may just have grabbed it as it passed by. Either way he undoubtedly bit the monkey or it may have bitten him(probably both!) I'm not absolutely sure if he ate part of it or not.

This IS only speculation but I can't see any other way 'Jomie' could have contracted Hepatitis B. other than from this isolated incident. He was born at Howletts, later moving to PL, and no other Gorilla in their collection(to my knowledge) has ever died from this. He died a couple of years after moving to ZSL, several years after the 'colobus incident' itself. What I don't know is the history of the monkey...

 

[Pertinax]

Interesting I always think of gorillas as gentle giants! Thought he may have killed it during a display

Gorillas are certainly not always gentle giants!! They do display many peaceful attributes but in times of tension they can equally be aggressive among themselves. In captivity Silverbacks have been known to attack , injure or kill offspring which aren't 'theirs' (i.e, unfamiliar to them) and they can be very hard on females sometimes too.

'Jomie' captured the monkey- it wasn't accidental. I'm not sure if he ate part of it or not. They're not known to hunt like Chimpanzees do in the wild, but captivity creates novel situations. It was a sad loss when he died.

 

[Pertinax]

Sometimes they get along fine (yes you probably knew that, but I had to forward links to these photos):

Yes they do. I've seen a number of photos of monkeys interacting with Gorillas in zoos, and seen them at Howletts too. But you may notice the interaction is normally with the younger animals or placid females. Silverbacks and large blackback males may not be so tolerant, so a playful monkey needs to alert to all members of the Gorilla group....

 

[Marcellus]

Slightly off topic but i thought this unfortunate story of Gorilla/Gorilla aggression maybe of interest...

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=10455351

 

[Pertinax]

Not off topic really as we were talking about Aggressiveness too. But it seems in this case it was really a Fluke- the male hit out at the young female(his daughter) probably in a dominance display- but the impact of hitting a solid floor/wall is what killed her, not his original(probably sideways) blow.

 

[tetrapod]

It would be an interesting study to see if the attacks by gorillas on smaller primates is connected to enclosure space and size. You can't help feel that in the cases where the gorilla was able to catch and kill the normally faster guenons and colobus, that if the smaller species had alot more space, then the negative interactions would be reduced.

Two other interesting mixed species cases. Taronga had orangs and crab-eater macaques together when the exhibit was first opened. There were a number of flaws. Some individuals of both species did not react positively towards the other, and so a compromise situation arose with some orangs being mixed with a non-breeding group of macaques. The macaques were eventually pulled due to the Herpes B problem. That said I feel that part of the previous problems was due to the exhibit not being exactly huge.

I have also seen on TV that Colchester mixed mangabeys with banded mongoose. The dominant male took exception to the carnivores and after attacking one individual, I believe they were pulled from the exhibit. However I am sure it was not an introduction on neutral ground, nor was the exhibit greatly modified for the mongooses.

I wonder whether the main problem we are seeing here is fitting a second species into an exhibit designed specifically for the larger and more (usually) dominant species?