When you meet a gorilla, you should look down modestly and rumble a low, friendly growl deep in your chest. It is only polite, and gorillas know the importance of manners. Our two guides had been chatting with us as we entered the gorillas’ living space. Suddenly the two men began growling to left and right. We were startled (they had been so charming up to that), and then laughed excitedly: nothing was going to be predictable today. The next few hours were about to overturn all our former assumptions about zoos. This was the moment of contact: we were in the presence of gorillas.
It was a freezing January day in the south of England and the gorillas were mostly inside in their private living quarters where it was cosy. The place smelt of warm bodies, soft stable smells—nothing rank, just a healthy, homely waft of someone there. There were many presences in the big space. Smaller monkeys flittered and chittered in the high reaches of the sturdy grilled walls and ceilings, diving along the ropes and streaking across the beams, or sitting nibbling a piece of fruit.
There were several gorilla youngsters romping about and pestering the adults, who either played with or ignored them as they went about their business. They were so busy; atypical of the usual gloomy, bored zoo gorilla. This was Kijo’s group. Kijo is a 22-year-old silverback, a dominant male gorilla with five females. There are five of his offspring as well: three female, two male, ranging from five years to six months old. His is one of eight groups, totalling 71 gorillas at Howletts & Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks, the largest number of captive breeding gorillas in the world.
‘We put the monkeys there because we thought they’d get on with each other and it would be enriching for them,’ said Robert Boutwood, Administrative Director. Peter Litchfield, the Zoological Director, told us what kind of monkey they were—something to do with making it all more like home for them with a mix of species—but just at that moment it went over our heads. We were looking at gorillas, several gorillas, as they mooched about doing gorilla stuff: nibbling raw vegies, relaxing in the warmth of the deep straw litter that forms the floor for all the gorilla quarters throughout the two zoos. The space was divided into several different interconnecting ‘rooms’ where each gorilla