Fort Worth's baby gorilla Jameela has officially arrived at her new home at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo!
Jameela arrived Wednesday afternoon safe and sound.
"The introductions here have gone really well. The troop here seems receptive to her presence," said Fort Worth's primary gorilla keeper Angie Holmes in video posted to social media.
"Our intial intro process has been really great. We've had interest from multiple gorillas. Fredricka, who is our proven surrogate, came over and had some really good interactions with Jameela. She made some vocalizations," said Brian Price, one of the gorilla keepers at the zoo in Cleveland.
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Those vocalizations as Jameela meets members of the troop are seen and heard in the video.
The video posted to social media Thursday morning appears to show the 11-week-old western lowland gorilla in a private plane for the 1,200-mile journey to her new home, then the handoff from Holmes to Price.
"We were able to get Jameela here safely and quickly, limited disruption to her schedule and she came right into the building and everything's been smooth," Holmes said.
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Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is a leader in gorilla research, care and management. It currently has seven gorillas in its troop. There's the silverback, four adult females, and a couple of infant gorillas.
There's high hope that a gorilla named Fredrika or "Freddy" will become her foster mom. She is the oldest gorilla in the troop and is also the dominant female.
She did it in 2021 with Kayembe, the first baby gorilla in Cleveland history. He was also born premature and his mother failed to bond with her baby like in Jameela's case.
"Freddy is the one who stepped in right away within minutes of us, presenting Kayembe to her. She picked him up and was his foster. And so, he is now, almost two and a half. So, he's pretty independent. And what's really nice is he's been spending more time with his birth mom and, still, Freddy is absolutely his mom," said Elena Less, the zoo's animal curator.
Not only has Freddy proven she can be a foster mom to Kayembe. She's had seven kids of her own.
"She's very wise, very relaxed, very socially savvy. So she's kind of our who we're identifying as the foster to try. But we do have a couple of other females that show maternal behavior that if for some reason, Freddy doesn't, because the gorillas will tell us what they're gonna do," Less said.
Less praised the Fort Worth Zoo for its care of Jameela following her historic birth. Jameela was delivered via emergency Cesarean section on January 5th after her mother Sekani developed preeclampsia.
The team got past the first big hurdle then came the second.
"When we actually had an introduction where we put the baby in the space with the mother what we believe, the vet staff has told us, is that being a month premature and not going through those hormone changes that would start a labor and a birth, Sekani probably did not recognize Jameela as her baby," said Angie Holmes, the primary gorilla keeper at the Fort Worth Zoo. "So when they were put in the same space, Sekani would look at her, be interested in her, did not accept her to pick her up, probably no recognition that that was her baby by not getting those hormonal cues."
The zoo turned to one, then two other females in the troop to care for Jameela. Both responded well to training but neither would pick up the baby.
"Our heart goes out to the Fort Worth Zoo staff and what they're dealing with," Less said. "We had done this with Kayembe back in 2021. And we had Freddie here who stepped up as his foster mom but if she hadn't, we would be in the same position and sending Kayembe to another zoo. So, it's taxing, It's so hard that the staff at the zoo are, are so invested. They do such excellent work and you get very emotionally attached. So we are all very empathetic to what Fort Worth is experiencing."
Less says in the first two to three days after Jameela's arrival, they'll try putting her with the Cleveland troop.
"We will have Jamilla in hand and we will be able to take her kind of behind the scenes near our troop where she won't be in with them quite yet, but we'll be able to see their reactions to her and that's gonna be really important to us. What we want to see are low gorilla grumbles; they do sort of like the moms might do breathy kisses towards her," Less explained. "But we are going to let them tell us, what the right thing to do is it because they know they know best."
Both the Fort Worth and Cleveland zoos withheld details about Jameela's 1,200-mile journey. They only said it would happen sometime in the next several days.
