Bikira the Western Lowland Gorilla

Origin
Although Bikira was born in Arnhem Zoo on August 12, 1995, she went on to spend her tender years in a “gorilla kindergarten” in Stuttgart, Germany. Here she lived in the company of other gorilla babies who, for one reason or another, could not be raised by their mothers. Later on, she moved to Belfast. There she was part of a troop led by the likely-infertile male named Boulas, who was afterwards replaced by Gougas. However, Bikira had known Gougas from her youth, from the Stuttgart gorilla kindergarten, and regarded him as her brother, so she never conceived with him. Nevertheless, she did play a key role in his life: after Boulas’s departure, she helped Gougas become the troop’s resident silverback. In 2010, it was Bikira’s turn to be happy. So our “Virgin” moved to Prague to join a growing and functioning family led by Richard, our silverback male, so that she could finally get a chance at motherhood.

Temperament
Bikira is very friendly to people and does not try to stick her hands through the bars and grab her keepers. In short, she is a stranger to all deceit and guile. Her affability is, indubitably, due to having been raised by people – the other gorillas know how to get their way by being much more assertive.
She likes to win favor through bribes. After she arrived in Prague in December 2010, she would stick her hands through the bars and offer tidbits not just to her keepers, but also to other gorillas. From the very beginning she showed a lively interest in baby gorillas, including the adolescent Moja [Moya], the first gorilla born in Czechia, who was then still living in Prague Prague (she now lives in Cabárceno, Spain). At first, Moja would be rather impertinent and take liberties with her, but in time, they grew to be fast friends, often lounging together in a nest of wood wool. From time to time, Moja would even defend Bikira when the latter brawled with the others.

Breeding
Bikira lives with the other gorillas – the silverback male Richard, the females Kijivu, Shinda and Kamba and the young males Nuru and Kiburi – in the Pavilion of gorillas in the lower zoo. The pavilion, which includes a flood tower, was from the first meticulously designed to meet even the most exacting conditions and demands imposed by these magnificent apes when in captivity. The gorillas spend their day in a 250-square-meter exhibit equipped with heated walls and floor, where they can caper on massive leafless oak boughs or rest on a soft layer of beech chips or in snug nests made of wood wool. But when it is time to eat, they repair to their back-of-house “bedrooms”. There, out of zoo visitors’ sight, each gorilla sits down at his or her feeding doorway to receive the main portion of their food. The bedrooms are divided by partitions so that we can isolate individuals safely and easily in the event of any strife within the group or for other reasons. Also available to the Prague troop is an open-air enclosure, whose sloping terrain our gorilla family loves to haunt, especially on sunny summer days.

Lamentably, it is gradually becoming apparent that we must expect large-scale flooding to strike Prague much more often than used to be the case. However, if a really big flood came, even the gorilla-house flood tower would not be enough, and the gorillas would have to be evacuated to another zoo. And so, in order for the gorilla troop not to have to be repeatedly subjected to the stress of being put to sleep and transported, the decision was taken in 2013 to build a new pavilion for the gorillas in the upper zoo, which is safe from flooding.

Bikira has so far given birth to one baby, a male called Tano. Unfortunately, she proved unable to look after him, so the baby ended up in a gorilla kindergarten in the Stuttgart Zoo (the same where Bikira herself grew up). Now, Bikira is watching the males Kiburi and Nuru grow up; and especially thanks to Nuru, who was born to Kijivu on December 22, 2012, Bikira is able to witness, from the very beginning, the way a baby gorilla is raised. We hope that in the process she will absorb the basic principles of proper gorilla maternal care, something that she could not have acquired from the people who raised her. After that, she will get another chance to breed.