Gorilla of my dreams
Like any good foster parent, Alan Toyne shared everything with the babies he was responsible for rearing—his bed, his dining table, his life. And if you paid him a visit in his home in Bristol England during a seven-month period, you’d be impressed with his dedication to ensuring those babies learned how to climb, swing, grunt, and beat their chest—since they were a pair of lowland gorillas. Toyne had been working for 10 years as a zookeeper at the Bristol Zoo and he brought his work home. He became part of the first team in the UK to hand-rear baby gorillas by working to replicate as much natural behavior as possible. The surrogacy was necessary because Kera, one of 7 lowland gorillas at Bristol Zoo, developed pre-eclampsia, a birth complication that also occurs in humans, and her baby, later named Afia, was born 4 weeks early through an emergency C-section and rejected.
“We were the first team to use the surrogacy method of hand-rearing gorillas,” Toyne explains to the British media outlet SWNS, “other gorillas were hand-reared in the UK, but weren’t introduced to adult gorillas until they were four years old.” The team leader of 6, Toyne, who had worked in the finance department of an engineering firm before joining a volunteer zookeeper program at Bristol Zoo in 2006, described the process as “an amazing experience.” “I still remember the first day bringing Afia back to my home in her car seat and putting her asleep on table,” Toyne said. “My partner, Sharon, was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’ and fell in love with her straight away.” Unlike the other hand-rearing methods Toyne mentioned, he and his team brought Afia up side-by-side with the other gorillas to ensure they grew up “proper.” “The first thing the gorillas had to learn how to do is cling onto their mothers—so we would wear these string vests,” to replicate gorilla fur, he explained. “It was all about training her how to be a proper gorilla, so you had to replicate all of the necessary factors.”
“During the day she would spend time with the gorillas, and if they came over to interact with Afia we would make sure they could—it was important to make them think she was part of the troop, as we always knew she would return to them.” Alan admitted it was emotional to say goodbye to the baby gorillas at first, but he was overjoyed their hand-rearing experiences had been positive and successful. “Back then, if a baby gorilla needed rearing, they would go into a nursery all together, which spurs on their development and play behaviors; but the downside is they don’t understand gorilla social behavior. This human treatment meant Kera (the babies’ mother) never fitted in, and was isolated,” Toyne said. “The method we were using was to get the babies in with a surrogate to pick up natural gorilla behavior, then they would fit in normally and be ‘a normal gorilla.’” After seven months, a surrogate mother took care of raising him socially, while the zoo team continued to bottle-feed Afia and Hasani for three years.
Primate Humor
Why do gorillas have such big fingers?
Because they have such big nostrils!
Where does an 350 pound gorilla sit?
Anywhere he wants.
A gorilla and a man walk into a bar.
The bartender asks, “What will it be?”
The man replies, “Beer for me, and ice for my friend here.”
“Ice?” the bartender asks.
“Yes.” He replied. “Just-ice for Harambe.”
I was pretty insecure as a child. When I was eight, I asked my mother if I was adopted.
She said, “Yes, but they returned you.”
May 29th Birthdays
1993 – Maika Monroe, 1990 – Riley Keough, 1958 – Annette Bening, 1963 – Lisa Whelchel
1903 – Bob Hope, 1984 – Carmelo Anthony, 1914 – Tenzing Norgay, 1917 – John Kennedy