Gorilla Baby
Only take heed to thyself, and keep
thy soul diligently,
lest thou forget the things which
thine eyes have seen,
and lest they depart from thy heart
all the days of thy life:
but teach them thy sons, and thy
sons' sons. . . .
-- Deuteronomy 4:9
We went
to the zoo last weekend. The inhabitants display amusing expressions and
gestures that remind me of my relatives.
In the gorilla
hangout, we saw a human inside the glass enclosure, cuddling and playing with an
adorable baby gorilla in a tiny diaper. Relatives, all right - on my husband's
side.
The zookeeper
was sitting on an easy chair looking normal and domestic, except the baby on
his lap hanging playfully from his outstretched arms was a pointy-headed furtop
with hairy armpits.
Behind
them, leaning casually up against the glass, was a grown gorilla. I figured she
was the mama, and the zookeeper was just acclimating the baby gorilla to human
handling. After a few minutes of zoological nannying, I thought he'd give the
baby back to her, like the 5:30 p.m. handoff at day-care centers coast to
coast.
Then a
friend set me straight. Actually, that fascinating little scene has the makings
of a horror show, with chilling parallels for us humans.
See, the
friend had been there the week before, and talked to the zookeeper. It seems
the gorilla mama, Timu, the world's first test-tube gorilla, had been rejected
by her mother. She never got gorilla-style nurturing and love. She had been
raised in the zoo nursery, and though the humans tried to simulate gorilla mothering
as much as they could, it was tough.
After all
that human interaction, when they tried to introduce Timu into the gorilla
social group, they rejected her, too. Now she was not only rejected, but socially
isolated. But gorilla breeding is important, so they wanted her to reproduce.
Timu did
not bond with her first baby, Bambio. According to the zoo's news archives, she
was gentle and protective at first, carrying her five-pound baby in her hands.
But she never did put her up to her chest for a hug. She kept losing interest
altogether and laying her down on the floor. The baby's body temperature got so
low that zookeepers had no choice but to take her to the nursery and hand-raise
her from there, like her mother before her.
Bottom
line: nurturing is only partly instinctive. A lot of it is learned, by
observation. You can't give what you never got.
So when
it happened again, with this baby, born April 8, the zookeepers took the baby
away again, and are trying to model good mothering - holding, feeding, cuddling
and playing with the baby in the demonstration booth -- hoping that Timu will
learn from observation, and do better next time.
My friend
saw the lesson for homo sapiens, with our addictions, our TV watching, our
cohabitation, our full-time day care and our broken homes. Who pays? Children.
She wrote:
"Imagine: 'mothering' is only one generation away from extinction. Loving and
persevering in parenting (and marriage) should be imprinted - learned by living
it. Is it any wonder young marriages are crumbling at such a rapid pace? How
many young people are going at it without the pattern of having lived in it
while growing up?"
She's
right. We have to stop monkeying around with motherhood. We have to do
everything we can to support it, in our families and in our nation.
But boy,
am I glad that I'm not, at the present time, lactating. That's because, in
researching for this story, I read that in another gorilla "baby neglect" case.
The zookeepers found a young human mother who was breastfeeding, and had her
sit outside the gorilla cage and demonstrate how it's done for the wide-eyed
spectator gorillas.
Now,
that's going all out - literally.
With my
luck, if my dairies were currently in operation, I'd be getting a call any day
now. Because I love animals so much, I doubt I could say no.
Hey! Let's
be for motherhood . . . but let's not go ape. †
