At 3:22 a.m. on May 23, in the African Forest habitat at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, a 14-year-old gorilla named Kambera gave birth.
The delivery of a healthy, 5-pound male capped two hours of intense labor — “You could see contractions,” said zookeeper Audra Meinelt — and 8 1/2 months of pregnancy. In a very real sense, though, Kambera’s as-yet-unnamed baby was conceived much earlier — four years earlier.
Long before he was a gleam in his parents’ eyes, the latest addition to the zoo’s gorilla population was a genetically appealing possibility in a computer database. (Think eHarmony for endangered species.)
So, while Kambera and the baby’s father, Oliver, were key players in the blessed event, they got a valuable assist from more than a few members of their extended primate family — including conservation experts, veterinary specialists and, yes, computer programmers.
“A birth of a gorilla at a zoo isn’t just a random event,” said Doug Warmolts, the zoo’s director of animal care. “It’s something we plan for very carefully.”
Warmolts said Kambera’s baby can trace his lineage to a Species Survival Plan — SSP — approved in 2009 by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums. Thanks to that plan, every Western lowland gorilla in North America has an electronic ID card detailing its ancestry, gender and health.
When Kambera emerged as a good candidate to reproduce, Warmolts went looking for a suitable mate — with the aid of software designed to crunch the pertinent SSP data.
Up popped Oliver, a 24-year-old silverback living at a wildlife refuge in Georgia. That he was the last in his bloodline made him particularly attractive.
“His genes were not represented in the population,” Warmolts said. “He just simply hadn’t been with females much of his life or had the opportunity to breed.”
In fact, although the refuge was called Gorilla Haven, Oliver had gone almost 14 years without any contact with other gorillas. Much of that time, his sole companions were goats.
Oliver moved to the zoo in September 2009, but his assimilation proved a bit challenging — not only because of his monastic background but also because of an unrelated disability: He’s deaf.
“We needed to get used to how we would communicate,” Warmolts said.
Once Oliver was comfortable with his new surroundings, he was introduced to Kambera, who had been born at the zoo by caesarean section in February 1999.
One thing, as they say, led to another.
Kambera and Oliver’s progeny was the 31st gorilla born at the zoo, a leader in primate conservation since 1956, when it oversaw the first-ever birth of a gorilla in captivity.
Shortly after delivering her baby, however, Kambera appeared to lose interest in him.A month later, Kambera continues to ignore her little one, so Meinelt and her African Forest colleagues find themselves — once again — giving Mother Nature a hand.
“We completely emulate gorilla behavior,” Meinelt said. “That means we’re holding him at all times — just like a gorilla. We’re making gorilla vocalizations whenever we’re feeding the baby because that’s what a mom would do.”
They even milk Kambera on a regular basis. That way, when (or if) her maternal instincts kick in, she’ll still be lactating.
The zoo’s staff, which has developed one of the world’s most-acclaimed surrogacy programs, is confident that Kambera or one of the zoo’s other female gorillas eventually will take over child-rearing duties.