Mjukuu gave birth overnight in a cage of a London Zoo.
After an eight and a half month gestation, the 15-year-old delivered a
healthy Western lowland baby, a critically endangered gorilla species.
“Mom is tired,” London Zoo gorilla keeper Daniel Simmonds told ABC News.
“She’s sleeping all the time, but she’s doing really well. She’s a
brilliant mother.”
The gender of the baby is not known yet. “We never go inside ... and for
the time being, the mother has been holding her baby against her
chest,” he said. “We’ll find out in the next few days when she cleans
him/her.”
If it’s a female, the gorilla will likely be able to stay with his
family. But if it’s a male, he will have to move somewhere else once he
reaches sexual maturity at age 10.
The newborn and mom cohabit with three other gorillas, including father,
Kumbuka. “His job is to do nothing,” Simmonds said. “He’s there to
protect them but he’s not allowed to play or touch his child for now. If
he does, the mother will get very angry.”
This infant, who is already strong enough to grip independently to his
mother’s back, “is a really important addition,” Simmonds said in a
written statement, “not only to the Zoo, but for the European
conservation breeding program.”
Because of poaching and disease, Western lowland gorillas’ numbers have
declined by more than 60 percent in the past 20 to 25 years, according
to World Wildlife website.
They are classified as “critically endangered” on the International
Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, an independent and
comprehensive research group dedicated in evaluating the conservation
status of plant and animal species.
“Most protected areas have serious poaching problems and almost half of
the habitat under protected status has been hard hit by Ebola,” the IUCN
reported.
In addition, the gorillas’ very low reproductive rates mean that even
low levels of hunting are enough to cause population decline: “under the
most optimistic scenarios, population recovery would require on the
order of 75 years,” according to the IUCN.
The infant is the first offspring of the zoo's male gorilla, Kumbuka,
who arrived in May 2013 from Paignton Zoo in South West England.
No comments :
Post a Comment