Tulivu, born May 2, cuddles with caretaker after her bottle.
Today I stopped back by the zoo at 4:00 p.m. Nobody was in the nursery so the caretaker turned the baby gorilla so that I could get a photo without a flash or window reflection. Her name, Tulivu, is a Swahili word meaning peaceful or calm. I learned from a docent that she will begin to have teeth at 3 months and will be mostly on solid food by six months. Still, she will need several bottles of milk each day until she is two years old. Once she is on solid food, she will be returned to her troup in the gorilla enclosure. The keepers feel that one of the three females in the troup will take responsibility for her. They believe they can actually train the mentor to take a bottle through the small window in the keeper-door and feed it to the baby.
Posted by: john paul greaves | December 08, 2004 at 09:54 AM