Description
Just as gorillas have a special allure for zoo visitors world wide, the Columbus, Ohio, zoo has a special place in the history of the care and captive breeding of the greatest of the great apes. Columbus was once the site of the world’s first captive gorilla birth in 1956, and in the more than four decades that have followed since that historic day, twenty-six more gorillas have been born into the Columbus Zoo gorilla family. Gorillas in Our Midst chronicles the characters and events that have made the Columbus gorilla program world renowned. From the brutal capture of the zoo’s first gorillas in the rain forests of Africa to the birth and mother-rearing of a fourth generation of offspring, creator Jeff Lyttle takes the reader through the triumphs and tragedies of a captive gorilla program that may be on the vanguard of the effort to preserve the endangered western lowland gorilla. A number of the fascinating events Lyttle narrates are the birth of Colo, the world’s first captive-born gorilla, now the mother of three, the grandmother of fifteen, and the great-grandmother of two gorillas, and still going strong at the age of forty. He also tells the story of the first gorilla twins born in the Western Hemisphere-Macombo and Mosuba-as they grow from playful infants to important members of gorilla troops at two American zoos. Lyttle has interviewed more than twenty current and former members of the Columbus Zoo staff to recount the main points of this compelling story. Jack Hanna, well-known Columbus Zoo Director Emeritus, provides the foreword for a book so we can be easy to pick out up and hard to put down. Jeff Lyttle is a graduate of The Ohio State University and has worked as a professional author and corporate communicator for more than twelve years. He has written for several popular and industry newspapers, newsletters, and magazines.