Where Do the Zoo Gorillas Come from?

Nearly all the gorillas living in zoos today are western gorillas. Most of them were born in captivity. In 1976, when the gorilla was included in Appendix I of CITES, out of 498 gorillas in captivity, 403 had been born in the wild. By contrast, of 692 animals living in zoos at the end of 1991, 371 were born in captivity. At the beginning of 1998, 760 gorillas were kept in 140 zoos. Until the 1970s, many thousands of gorillas died because young animals were captured for zoos. As a rule, several group members were killed in order to seize a single young gorilla. On December 22, 1956, Columbus Zoo in Ohio, USA, registered the first gorilla birth in captivity. The female infant was called Colo. She was not raised by her mother but by humans. Frequently, zoo gorillas reject their babies: they do not nurse them, and they may even mistreat them. In such a case the babies are bottle-fed.

Colo, the first gorilla born in a zoo Photo: Angela Meder

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