Zookeepers are scrambling to understand what factors may be causing the illnesses and what might be done to save the 368 lowland gorillas that currently reside in 52 zoos across North America. Gorillas in zoos around the nation, particularly males and those in their 20s and 30s, have been falling ill _ and sometimes dying suddenly _ from progressive heart ailments ranging from aneurisms to valvular disease to cardiomyopathy. Babec, the first gorilla to ever have a pacemaker inserted _ last September, had the device replaced Saturday, in a procedure that took a little over five hours at the Birmingham Zoo's Animal Health Center. Anna Ogburn, left, Marcia Reidmiller, second left, Jeff Cook and Beth Severson, right, roll Babec, a male silverback gorilla, out of the operating room, in this Mafile photo, in Birmingham, Ala. And in previous years, there were others: Akbar at the Toledo Zoo in 2005, and in 2000 both Sam at the Knoxville Zoo and Michael at the Gorilla Foundation in California. A week before that, the Memphis Zoo lost one named Tumai the same way.
Just two months before the deaths at the National Zoo, the San Francisco Zoo had lost a lowland gorilla named Pogo to heart disease. Gorillas in zoos around the nation, particularly males and those in their 20s and 30s, have been falling ill - and sometimes dying suddenly - from progressive heart ailments ranging from aneurisms to valvular disease to cardiomyopathy. Diagnosed just a month earlier with congestive heart failure related to cardiomyopathy, Kuja (pronounced KOO-yah) died while undergoing surgery to receive an advanced pacemaker. No less troubling, two days earlier the National Zoo had lost its only other male group leader, a silverback named Kuja. “That’s what made it even more of a shock.”
“There was nothing to indicate he was feeling poorly or under the weather,” recalls Stevens. And yet, he had not shown any outward symptoms, and his diet and behavior were normal. Like his father, who had died the same way at the zoo in the early 1990s, Mopie had previously been diagnosed with an unexplained form of heart disease known as fibrosing cardiomyopathy, in which healthy heart muscle turns into fibrous bands unable to pump blood. By the time the keepers cleared out the other gorillas and tried CPR on Mopie, the gentle, 430-pound giant was lifeless - a victim of heart failure at 34. Which is why Stevens and the zoo’s staff were so stunned when, on the afternoon of July 3, 2006, this prized western lowland gorilla suddenly collapsed after playing with some newly introduced mates. “The unique thing about Mopie was how extremely handsome he was,” says Lisa Stevens, curator of primates and giant pandas at the National Zoo, and whenever the silverback sat, proudly, in the exhibit’s trees, “it just added to his impressiveness.”
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