ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260047
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY SAWYER THE WASHINGTON POST
NOTE: Below
THE GORILLA overcame a childhood of sickness and rejection to display a gentleness so powerful that human beings worldwide stop to reflect.
Human beings, a diverse and contentious lot, seldom unite as a species. But last week, a lowland gorilla reached out to one of us and, it now seems, reached all of us.
The drama began with the sound of screams captured on an amateur video Aug. 16 at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. A rambunctious 3-year-old boy had plummeted 18 feet down a concrete cliff into a pit full of gorillas, hit his head and lay there limp and unconscious.
In an image shown around the world since then, a young gorilla mother named Binti can be seen scooping up the flaxen-haired boy, tucking him under her muscular, hairy arm like a rag doll and calmly knuckle-walking him to safety.
In the '90s, everybody knows it's a jungle out there. Nice guys finish last. Trust no one. When a bomb goes off in a crowded park, suspect the security guard.
But Binti's simple cross-species gesture answered a human hunger for a different sort of world view. The boy is back at play, and visitors have flocked to the zoo to see the new celebrity. There have been offers of money, bananas and other gifts and honors. Camera crews from around the world have made Binti a daily television staple. Jay Leno has instituted a nightly gorilla skit.
Scientists such as Frans B.M. de Waal, who argue that human beings are not the only animals with consciences and souls, say their phones are suddenly ringing with interview requests.
Binti is getting fan mail: ``You are a wonderful example for all humankind to show that no matter who or what you are, you should always help one another,'' wrote two little Chicago-area girls, Sarah and Lauren.
An 88-year-old Los Angeles woman sent a card to ``My dearly loved Binti,'' saying, ``I had to cry with love for your beautiful gesture.'' Although the woman said she lives on a meager Social Security income, she enclosed $20 for ``a special dish of ice cream.''
Melinda Pruett-Jones, one of the zoo's curators, said the beleaguered staff has installed an extra phone line to handle the global demand for information. ``Binti has become an ambassador for better understanding of animals,'' she said. ``And I've become Binti's spokesperson.''
The boy, whose identify has been withheld at the request of his family, was discharged from the hospital Tuesday. He was recovering and generally ``acting like a 3-year-old,'' said Michael Maggio of the Loyola University Medical Center near Chicago.
Why did Binti act as she did? And does the ensuing furor reveal more about Binti or about us? Many experts suggest the gorilla was just doing what came naturally and that it's human beings whose reaction - or overreaction - is worthy of note.
Despite research-based films and books showing gorillas as complex, intelligent, social and basically peaceful, ``people still underestimate the gentleness of the great apes,'' said Gregory Westergaard, an animal psychologist who studies tool-making in capuchin monkeys at the National Institutes of Health. The problem is that in terms of their size and strength, ``gorillas may display some of our darker side superficially.''
``This was good parenting, good gorilla group behavior,'' said Kenneth G. Gould, of Emory University's Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, which is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. ``What Binti did is not surprising. ... But I think it's going too far if you read altruism into it'' - that is, the idea that Binti acted out of love for humans.
The center of all the attention is an 8-year-old lowland gorilla whose full name, Binti-Jua, means ``daughter of sunlight'' in Swahili and whose own life story has had ups and downs worthy of a homo sapien soap opera.
After she was born at the Columbus Zoo, something caused Binti's eye to swell and she was removed briefly from her den for medical treatment. After that, her relationship with her mother was never the same, her keepers say. She failed to gain weight and, to assure her survival, was sent to the San Francisco Zoo for three years of care and feeding. Her handlers then carefully introduced into her to what they hoped would become her permanent family at Brookfield.
They succeeded beyond their dreams, Pruett-Jones said, and Binti found romance. Waiting at Brookfield was Abe, at 37 the oldest gorilla in captivity but childless (and now deceased). ``He had never before bred in captivity,'' said Pruett-Jones, ``but he clicked with Binti.''
Considering Binti's history, once her keepers learned she was pregnant, they gave her lessons in parenting. ``We are not claiming we can train an animal to be a mother,'' said Pruett-Jones, a specialist in vertebrate social behavior. But some of the animals had seemed uncomfortable with nursing, and the staff had developed a technique.
They gave Binti a ``generic, four-legged stuffed animal'' covered with synthetic fleece to play with. They also used a syringe to create suction and get her used to nursing. The zoo team also has employed what they call ``environmental enrichment'' techniques, including praise and rewards of grapes and raisins.
This was the setting into which the 3-year-old boy fell a week ago. He had darted away from his mother, climbed a 4-foot railing and fell, possibly hitting his head on a rock that jutted out and broke his fall, according to the medical center. The boy had bruises on his brain, the left side of his face and his head; a laceration on his face required stitches. His left hand was broken.
In addition to Binti and her 18-month-old baby, five other gorillas roamed the enclosure. Witnesses said Binti seemed to protect the boy from the others and, when she didn't need an arm for knuckle-walking, she cradled him in both arms.
Zoo keepers aimed high-pressure water hoses at the ground to signal and herd the gorillas toward a door leading out of the exhibit area. ``Everybody knew at this point that this was a very tense, very frightening and dangerous situation,'' Pruett-Jones said.
Binti, with her own baby clinging to her back, carried the boy to the gate where she routinely exits and is used to finding her keepers. She set the boy down and left, responding to a keeper's signals to move to the other exit, Pruett-Jones said. Paramedics quickly retrieved the child.
As Pruett-Jones sees it, Binti ``picked up that little boy as a little primate. He's not much bigger than the [gorilla] infant on her back. She's had reinforcement - praise, grapes and raisins - for that kind of behavior.''
But why, in the midst of all the confusion, did Binti gently lay the boy at the door where she knew human beings would be waiting? Pruett-Jones said, ``I don't know.''
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Binti. color.by CNB