Kriba and baby Kipenzi at Taronga Zoo
On the way from South Africa last month, I had a brief visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo for the sole purpose of visiting their two groups of Western lowland gorillas. Anyone who knows me well will be aware that I am a gorilla nut, they are my absolute favourite animals, but I don't often get the chance to spend time watching them in the flesh. Whilst I didn't enjoy the zoo itself all that much, and found the gorilla enclosures (and the loud, disrespectful and highly populous horde of visitors!) to be not the greatest, I did enjoy spending quiet moments with Kibali and Kimya, as their enclosure wasn't as mobbed as the main one, and they had access to an area away from the rude public. Admittedly, seeing the beautiful Kriba with her utterly gorgeous new infant, Kipenzi was very special. It's wonderful to see apes being raised lovingly by there mothers, so many apes are not so lucky in this regard. I had just spent two weeks at a sanctuary caring for many ape orphans, so seeing an infant lucky enough to be raised this way made me very happy.
On another gorilla-related note, I've just started researching for a university report, which is to be on an endangered species of my choice... can you guess which species I chose? I'm hoping that I will be able to visit Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo to visit and photograph the gorillas for this project. I will also be contacting people involved with gorilla conservation (the species I chose was the Western gorilla). Should be fun, and hopefully an opportunity to learn a bit more about a species that I am so passionate about.
This is Kimya, the young female who is living with the new male, Kibali. She is probably the most beautiful gorilla I've seen. Kimya often holds her hands to her ears, which I hear is a trait unique to gorillas originally from Apenheul (Kimya's mum, Kriba came to Taronga from Apenheul).
So, that was the 'gorillas', here come the 'things'; basically what I'm going to be getting up to. The big ape news in South Australia at the moment is that lovely Zombi at Monarto Zoo has become a mum for the first time. I can't wait to visit the chimp group, and see Zombi with her precious new infant. While my feelings about apes in zoos are very mixed, I know that Zombi's little one will have a fantastic future at Monarto, the chimps have an excellent enclosure, with lots to do. Having a new baby around must be great for the newly formed group as well.
Here's a photo of Zombi from when I last saw her, way back in April (it's been FAR too long since I've been to see the chimpanzees!)
On to the doggy stuff- Bella recently had her first (and last!) sleepover with her Borzoi friend Arya. Unfortunately, it was all just too exciting and they were up at three in the morning wanting to play. After almost two hours of trying to convince them to go back to sleep, we ended up giving in and letting them play outside for a few minutes, waking up whoever had managed to, so far, sleep through the noise. Finally the two naughty hounds went back to sleep at about 5AM. On the plus side, we were quite productive that weekend, and Bella will soon have two new pyjama coats.
We recently started obedience classes at a different club (this one has a fence), I'm hoping that we'll get to the point where Bel can give agility a try because I think she'd love it. We're entering two conformation shows in September, and another two in October, hopefully will get a few more points, or otherwise just have a lot of fun. :)
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