Gorilla feeding 1973

Scanned from an Ektachrome slide. This strange hand-feeding of the females and juveniles took place in the afternoon, after the silverback Matze had been separated. This is discussed in this thread http://www.zoochat.com/2/weirdest-things-you-saw-zoos-399572/. Ape House, Frankfurt, 30th August 1973.

Alan

Wow - that photo is priceless!

So whats strange on that pciture ? This was to way to handle with female gorillas, chimps and young male chimps in zoos around the world until the late 80ties..Altough Zoos do not do that nowaydas, sothey still do it with elephants,( of course, there wery never"Elephant Tea Parties, but instead of them, cicus shows with elephants....) but the diffrence is, Horst Kloses, shown and pictures has build his relationship to the aps on a trust basis, so completly diffent to the relationship between keeper and elephants, which is build on power and violence-the keepers use violence and punishment to sujugate the elephants-still widespread in zoos of the world, isn't it ?

Horst Kloses Relationship to the female goriallas was very deep-Dorette" even allowed him to take her son"Horst from here,the first gorilla raised but its mother at Frankfurt Zoo.

I disagree; in the UK chimps' tea parties were abandoned by this date and they were only for young animals, usually hand-raised ones. You couldn't do this sort of thing with adult chimps. To the best of my knowledge, no gorillas have been treated in this way in the UK in my lifetime. Of course people have gone in with gorillas, notably the Aspinalls, but they basically played together (which I suppose was/is mutual enrichment) - they never made them sit in line, with their arms crossed, to be spoon-fed one-by-one.
I am not saying that this was bad practice at the time. I am sure it did have some good consequences in establishing a relationship between the gorillas and their keeper(s) and in feeding nutritional supplements in the porridge or gruel that they were given. At this time keeping gorillas in large groups was still pretty experimental, Howletts was the only place in Europe that had more gorillas than Frankfurt in 1973 and they did things rather differently, but both places have made many changes since 1973.
This does look very odd now, not just because of the training of the gorillas, but also because of the tiled indoor enclosure (and the concrete and stone outdoor one, shown in another photo) and the buckets of fruit, which gorillas are now given in very limited amounts. One thing was immediately clear to me and I wrote it down in my notes that evening: the keepers at Frankfurt were absolutely first class and this gorilla keeper certainly was no exception. He obviously knew the gorillas well and they completely trusted each other, obviously any suggestion or threat of violence would not have worked with a gorilla.
See the thread for more discussion of this topic.

Alan

I seem to remember that staff at Bristol Zoo were very hands-on with the female and young gorillas in the early days of breeding there .

Another nostalgia-fest...

You are absolutely correct- this was a 'continental' method of husbandry-Basel did similar with theirs though not quite so regimented and other places like Munich also made their young Gorillas eat at a table etc. 'Going in' with adult Gorillas and training like this was pretty much absent in the UK, apart from Howletts of course and as you said, they were not 'trained' there at all. Frankfurt/Basel keepers were first rate and really knew how to work their animals. I don't know if any European zoos still use this practise in any more modern form or if its been dropped entirely.

They were indeed, mainly with Delilah in the old Gorilla house. After they moved they still treated Diana like that for a long time, but none of the others. But they weren't regimented like Frankfurt.

It is great to see these older photos, ( and a great reply by the way.)

Yet when I first saw it it was the most modern-looking enclosure for Gorillas I had seen,,, all that space, the lighting and big plate glass windows, tiles and shiny metal climbing bars. Real ground-breaking stuff!