ZSL London Zoo New Western Lowland Male Gorilla

Kesho Transfer News Links

I just want to pass on further newspaper links to the news story of Kesho transferring to London Zoo

Can she handle a new gorilla in her midst? - Science, News - The Independent

Irish gorilla Kesho drafted in as 'surrogate' husband and father at London Zoo - Telegraph

London zoo brings in Irish gorilla to replace dead males | UK news | The Guardian

The transfer seems to have come a lot earlier than I had predicted/speculated. Sorry, if I have inadvertently misled anyone.
 
According to the Telegraph (link in Kifaru Bwana's post above) Mujkuu isn't due until late October so providing that Kesho arrives by the deadline set (end of August) they should have a two month window to get him in with them before the baby arrives.
I hope the baby is a female as she could then stay on and hopefully be breed with Kesho in the future :)
 
There was just a piece on BBC London News, I think it's good that ZSL are being very open about this process.
 
Now this is the sort of press I would like the zoo to release more of. It is honest and frank, and doesn't treat readers like idiots.
 
Kesho's the Boy!

They are being very upfront about what they are planning to do, perhaps because they can't avoid it. Kesho is a good choice as he's socially perfect and will be almost a surefire breeder as a result. BUT he is rather young still to handle a group of females properly- in the US they don't allow males of this sort of age to be group leaders, waiting instead until they are fully mature. However, Kesho is a good choice in every other respect.

I am a bit doubtful whether they can really 'trick' him into thinking the baby is his- the time span they have to work with is so short and he will presumably need a bit of time to settle down first before they can start the introductions. But on the plus side he comes straight from a family group so they should be able to integrate him very quickly.

They say they've chosen him because of his youth, potentially more playful and so less aggressive. How successful this is depends on his own nature and how he relates to the others. If he likes Mjuku straightaway, he's less likely to want to harm the baby. I'm sure they are doing this now as otherwise they wouldn't dare introduce him to Mjuku after the baby is born, for the reasons they state, which could keep her out of the group for a long time to come.

Zaire is certainly not too old to breed at 35- though it may be more difficult as she's gone 20+ years without breeding now.

A very interesting time awaits..
 
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Pertinax is too modest to mention that he suggested Kesho as the most suitable male for Regents Park on 27th of March. Good call!
I heard an interview with Assistant Director of Dublin on 5 Live Drive who seemed fairly optimistic - lets hope he's right.

Alan
 
Pertinax was absolutely right. I'm glad to hear Kesho is on the way to London I hope it all goes O.K they deserve some luck.
 
London Zoo's gorilla breeding initiative is questioned by conservationists | Environment | The Observer

London Zoo's gorilla breeding initiative is questioned by conservationists

Is our preoccupation with the species in captivity distracting from the problems they face in the wild?

Sunday 8 August 2010

London Zoo announced that, in August, Kesho, an 11-year-old male "blackback" gorilla will be imported from Dublin in the hope he might graduate to silverback status and breed with the females in Regent's Park.

One would find it hard to recall the last time we read a story about the baby-making issues of other under-threat species in our zoos. Why are we fascinated by gorillas and their breeding habits? Ian Redmond, a biologist and conservationist who worked with Dian Fossey in the 1970s, refers to himself as a "lifelong gorillaholic". He is consultant to the Born Free Foundation; in 2009 he was an ambassador for the UN year of the gorilla; and he taught Sigourney Weaver how to grunt like a gorilla for her role as Fossey in 1988's Gorillas in the Mist.

"We seem to be more excited by gorillas perhaps because they embody many of the characteristics we wish we had. Chimpanzees are very like us – prone to violence and mob culture sometimes – but gorillas have a reputation for being above all that."

So our interest in gorillas isn't necessarily about their fight against extinction and conservation issues are often far from our minds. Redmond finds a zoo visit "very uncomfortable".

"You see a lot of institutionalised behaviour patterns that you see in humans – rocking, plucking of hair, boredom and stress – things you don't see in the wild because there's so much going on. In the wild, they take the daily decisions, not someone else."

Such as decisions about who they breed with. As Redmond says, breeding is a tricky business among complex social mammals. Ask London Zoo: in 22-years of trying they have only managed to produce one youngster.

"In captivity, males are not competing with each other and females aren't weighing up the talent and choosing – they're presented with a male." The patter of tiny gorilla feet will only follow if they "get on".

In 2006, Bristol Zoo used IVF drugs to help produce a baby gorilla, but what practical use this has for gorillas in the wild is unclear. The 125,000 odd gorillas in the wild don't have problems breeding, the problem is with hunters, farmers and mining companies destroying their habitat, and disease.

In less enlightened times, a zoo that fancied exhibiting a gorilla would just go and catch one. These days, that's not allowed – you have to breed your own. With this, Redmond argues you begin to see the creation of a sub-species. Zoos breed a type of gorilla that knows nothing of the forest. If you were inclined to reintroduce this zoo-bred gorilla to its natural habitat, you'd have problems.

The relationship between zoos and conservation is delicate. In 2007, London Zoo handed over 10% of the £5.3m budget for its gorilla kingdom enclosure to field conservation. Yet a warden of a national park in Africa might question why 90% is spent on maintaining captive gorillas.

David Field, zoological director of London Zoo, sees breeding as a key part of its role as a "safety net". "Without the funding that comes from zoos, the programmes for protecting gorillas in the wild would not get funding."

But Redmond wonders if the preoccupation with gorillas in zoos distracts from the threats they face in the wild, "If you look at the range of organisations that fund conservation in the wild, most don't hold animals captive. Increasingly, the public asks if we're wanting to raise money for field conservation, why do we need to keep them captive?"
 
CritterBlog;s said:
As Redmond says, breeding is a tricky business among complex social mammals. Ask London Zoo: in 22-years of trying they have only managed to produce one youngster.
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Being a primate scientist he has a very different perspective, though a lot of what he says is very true, particularly the part about Gorillas not having enough to do in captivity as so many of the elements of their wild existence are missing. But it is fairly unusual nowadays to see the aberrant 'disturbed' behaviour he describes, such as plucking hair, rocking etc in animals in zoo groups. It is largely a blanket stereotype of behaviour from the past except in fairly rare instances-though admittedly Zaire at London is one who does have phases of such behaviour on occassion, usually when there is no male present in the group which has happened to her three times in recent years.

However, London is unusual in that it has one of the poorest past breeding records with Gorillas(only 4 bred in total) virtually anywhere and it is certainly not typical of the breeding performance of Gorillas in captivity generally. Just down the road at Chessington, several of the females have been on contraceptives for some time now to prevent more breeding due to space problems (soon to be resolved) and we all know the Howletts/Port Lympne story,which nowadays does involve reintroductions to the wild.

The part about Bristol doing IVF with Salome not helping Gorillas in the wild is a bit irrelevant I think. Of course it doesn't help wild Gorillas, but it helped Salome have another baby (the reason for her infertility was not due to herself but probably connected with past bad management before she went to Bristol) and so allowed Bristol to form a more natural Gorilla group- for lots of visitors who can never hope to see wild Gorillas to be able to see.
 
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Pertinax has said exactly what I was thinking. On a similar and not entirely unconnected note, I was reading something about gorilla tracking in Rwanda and Uganda recently, it pointed out that the experience is completely new to people only used to seeing gorillas behind bars. But where can you see a gorilla behind bars these days?

My point is that anti-zoo campaigners use imagery and language which sounds convincing to the uninformed but actually relies upon practices and concepts which are now dated and uncommon.

Without wanting to get too far off topic, I don't like it when Port Lympne and Howletts say they aren't a zoo and how unique they are. They are a zoo and apart from perhaps some differences in philopsophy are no different to any other zoo, especially places like Whipsnade and Marwell and I think by using this language they actually give fuel to anti-zoo campaigners or visitors who are less well informed and go away thinking that other British zoos are not much better than roadside menageries.
 
Shirokuma said:
I don't like it when Port Lympne and Howletts say they aren't a zoo and how unique they are. They are a zoo and apart from perhaps some differences in philopsophy are no different to any other zoo,
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They like to see themselves as 'different' but of course they are zoos...;) and I know they have their failings in management of some animals, just like other zoos too.

John Aspinall was actively scathing about most other zoos, mainly the conventional 'urban' ones and particularly London which he detested. So by expounding their own philosophies they didn't care if other collections were portrayed in a bad light. Nowadays they have mellowed somewhat in their relationship with the outside zoo fraternity, and there are far more co-operative breeding loans/ transfers with other zoos even in the UK e.g. Belfast, Chester, Twycross, Paignton etc- though in all of these Howletts will nearly always ensure they still benefit somehow.
 
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Shirokuma said:
But where can you see a gorilla behind bars these days?

My point is that anti-zoo campaigners use imagery and language which sounds convincing to the uninformed but actually relies upon practices and concepts which are now dated and uncommon.
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Nowhere in Britain unless you call the Howlett's mesh 'bars'! There are still bad old barred cages housing Apes in some Eastern European zoos but very few nearer to the UK than that. (cue European posters to give some nearer examples here!) Nowadays anti zoo campaigners sometimes need to travel a long way to get those 'bad zoo' shots they use.

Regarding viewing Gorillas/Apes in the wild, of course its going to be an entirely different experience to zoo viewing. The animals though habituated to people, aren't humanised/tame like zoo animals, so they behave differently and are completely unconfined as they go about their business. But does that make good Gorilla/Ape displays in zoos any less worthwhile? I don't think so.
 
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