ASHEBORO The N.C. Zoological Park will soon have a new attraction that could increase attendance by as many as 100,000 visitors in the first year. "The zoo is expecting a baby gorilla," David Jones, the zoo's director, said Wednesday.
Jones made the announcement outside the zoo's gorilla exhibit, with Nkosi, the father-to-be, riffling through piles of hay looking for hidden snacks on the other side of the viewing window. The expectant mom, Jamani, noodled about in the back of the enclosure, seeming reluctant to show the press her emergent baby bump.
Baby anythings are popular zoo attractions, and infant primates are especially charismatic. Visitors continue to linger at the zoo's chimpanzee exhibit and stare adoringly at Nori, the still-tiny chimp baby born in August.
Since it opened in the 1970s, the N.C. Zoo has had only one other birth among its rotating troops of Western lowland gorillas: Kwanza, who arrived amid great fanfare to parents Hope and Carlos in March 1989.
About a half dozen baby gorillas are born each year in zoos in North America, mostly under the auspices of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan. The plan is a program of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association aimed at improving the captive care and breeding of gorillas, which are considered "critically endangered." There are about 350 gorillas in 52 North American zoos.
Over the years, at least 14 gorillas have been moved into and out of the N.C. Zoo to try to improve the chances of reproduction there and elsewhere. But while other zoos have seen dozens of new babies arrive, North Carolina has had none since Kwanza.
In the year after Kwanza's birth, the zoo had an additional 80,000 visitors. Families who had babies born on the same day would bring their children to see the young gorilla for years afterward, until he was moved to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo in 2005. He has since become a father himself.
Terry Webb, mammal curator for the zoo, said zookeepers suspected Jamani was pregnant as far back as December, and got positive readings several months in a row on at-home pregnancy tests, using urine collected from her indoor quarters. Finally, an ultrasound revealed a fetus. Jamani is about 51/2 months along, according to veterinarians' calculations. She's expected to deliver between late July and late August.