If you wonder why the illegal market in animals is so hard to shut down, look at the asking prices on this illegal price list above, which was sent to a zoo director, who had ethic's and turned it over to authorities. The price's aren't unrealistic and the smugglers get what they ask for.
The biologist in the clip above has got ice in his veins to be able to stand and not flinch as a male gorilla charges you, bluffing or not, you don't know what is on that magnificent creatures mind. LOL His name was/is Adrian De Shriver. I can't seem to find much out about him. Does anyone else know of him, or what his work was? Did he publish anything?
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Market Price for Gorillas
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Wade G. Burck
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I think this is quite old. I remember Gerald Durrell discussing this incident on TV. I think it was on The Stationary Ark which I saw on PBS years ago. I think the man in the clip was Belgian and married to a Pygmy woman. The baby gorilla which the adult gorilla grabbed was an orphan. Sincerely Paul PS: It died because none of the females in the group was producing milk.
PS: I think he was a game warden in what was Zaire at the time. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
Thank you for the great information. I could only find a couple of small references to the man in question.
Wade Burck
I just went and grabbed this book off a shelf: In The Kingdom Of The Gorillas by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder. They say that Adrien deSchryver was chief warden of the Kahuzi-Biega park. He was born in the Congo when it was a Belgian colony and had a Congolses wife and family. I think this was back in 1973 or 1974. The gorillas are eastern lowland gorillas or Grauer's gorillas, Gorilla gorilla graueri. Adrien was habituating a gorilla group belonging to Casimir for tourism. I suspect that Casimir is the gorilla in the film grabbing the orphan baby. The book also says that deShryver died "mysteriously". Sincerely Paul PS: I did'nt know they were habituating gorillas for tourism back in the 1970s or that this was being done in Zaire.
Paul,
Interesting. I also didn't realize they were habituating gorilla's to tourists as early as the 70's. Zaire was a dangerous, dangerous place to be back then. In fact Dian Fossey succumbed to the same deadly illness called "mysterious circumstances," as you know.
Wade
This film was made by the late German wildlife cameraman Dieter Plage. Below is a link to his Obituarie in The New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6DF163DF937A25757C0A965958260
He died in 1993 during a filming trip in Sumatra
Bjorn
Gerald Durrell claimed that this film proved that captive bred gorillas could be reintroduced to the wild and would be accepted by groups of wild gorillas. I also remember that gorilla-"Casimir"-from TV shows, maybe National Geographic documentaries. When I was a child my brothers and I never missed Untamed World. Sincerely Paul PS: I wonder where that orphan baby gorilla would have ended up if the big male had'nt grabbed it. I think there are some Eastern Lowland Gorillas, or possibly just one, in a Dutch zoo at the present time, and possibly one in Texas. Chester Zoo in England used to have them. I have been watching some documentaries of late about Chester Zoo on the Pet Network, called Zoo Days. I guess they're for children because it's so dumbed down (just my speed you might say), but they have so many animals. They are the largest zoo in Britain. They have seven or nine black rhino, a pair of Indian rhino, I think possibly Sumatran rhino (I recently saw an old newspaper article on the internet which used the expression "rhinoceri". It concerned the Milwaukee County Zoo's desire to acquire a pair of white "rhinoceri" back in 1957), okapis, Bornean orang-utans, chimpanzees (no gorillas now) A large herd of Asian elephants, a herd of giraffes including a tiny prematurely born baby which was too short to nurse from it's mother, scimitar horned oryx, Brazilian tapirs, spectacled bears, Komodo dragons etc. They had the Komodo dragon hatched from an unfertilized egg. I forget what you call that, parthenogenesis? A hammerhead shark was born this way at the Henry Doorly Zoo, from an unfertilized egg. It had no father, like Chester's Komodo dragon. Sincerely Paul
PS: Regarding Dian Fossey I believe that one of her students or helpers was accused of the crime and had to flee the country. I don't believe there was any possibility that he was guilty. Jimmy Stewart's daughter and son in law also worked with Dian Fossey in Rwanda. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
I was not aware that a Komodo Dragon was born by the process of parthenogenesis(immaculate conception, if it occurs in primates.) I was aware of the hammerhead at Henry Doorly though.
This type of reproduction has also been induced artificially in fish as well as amphibians.
Wade
Paul,
As far as I know their have never bin any Moutain or Easstern Lowland Gorilla's in any Dutch Zoo, Currently only Atnwerp Zoo in Belgium has one female Mountain Gorilla and one female Eastern Lowland Gorilla. In the past however there where a number of zoos who kept them.
Mountain Gorilla
Dusseldorf Zoo : 0.1 Blacky 1929 to 1930
Cologne Zoo: 0.2 Pucker and Coco 1969 to 1978
London Zoo: 1.0 Reuben 1960 to 1962
Eastern Lowland Gorilla
Hannover Zoo: 1963 they got 2.2 wildcought animals, 1.1 where moved to Oklahoma Zoo the next day. 0.1 moved to Atwerp Zoo on the same day, 1.0 remaind at zoo until 1964 when it probarly died, i have no futher info on him.
Chester Zoo: 1960 they recived 1.1wildcaught animals, in 1985 the lonley male was shipped to Antwerp Zoo.
London Zoo
1.0 1937 to 1941
1.0 1960 wildcaught animal
1.1 1962 to 1963 wild caught animals.
Ramat Gan Zoo Israel
1980 0.1 from Oklahoma Zoo, Shipped to Seoul Zoo in 1984.
Tel Aviv Abu Bakir University Zoo
1963 0.1 wildcaught animal,shipped to Oklahoma Zoo in 1971.
I hope this info wil help
Bjorn
Bjorn,
You the man!!!!! That's what I am talking about!!! That's how I learn and gain insight.
Wade
I was volunteering in the reptile department at a zoo when they had a clutch of snakes born via parthenogenesis. I do not remember how many survived, but I remember a university offered the zoo a lot of money for both the survivors and the bodies of the dead births. It was a fer-de-lance, found in South America.
Come on it is not even April yet. No April Fools talk yet.
'Baby lions' selling for that amount? I think not.
And an unfertilized egg will only give you omlet not Komodo. Dennis
Hold on. In my ignorance I proclaimed that an unfertilized egg will produce an omelet not a komodo.
Fascinated with this new 'asexual' chance at reproduction I delved further into the subject.
Seems some insects, lizards and even sharks have this ability.
So the ole man is still learning.
Thats a good thing. Dennis
There is an all female species of lizard, or several of them, called whip tailed lizards, which reproduce by cloning themselves. There was a case documented of a boy who was a partial parthenogenetic birth. There was an article about him titled The Boy Whose Blood Had No Father. They have also produced parthenogenetic chickens by a process which involves fertilizing the chickens with turkey sperm. This on one occasion resulted in hybrids instead of parthenogenetic chicks. I must confess to my ignorance here. I thought that Antwerp was in the Netherlands, not Belgium, but I was thinking of Antwerp Zoo in connection to the gorilla. By the way the parthenogenetic baby Komodo dragon was a male. I guess that's because it is the incubation temperature and not chromosomes which determines gender in reptiles. The baby could still be a clone of the mother and be male, just as there are identical twins of the opposite sex, and I was just thinking that the boy whose blood had not father is probably a chimera. I would guess that a fertilized egg fused with an unfertilized egg. I've heard of parthenogenetic rabbits produced artificially, by electrifying an unfertilized rabbit egg. I guess all of the cells in that rabbit's body would be haploid (?), if that's the right word. Sincerely Paul
I believe that London Zoo had a mountain gorilla which came from Uganda, from the wild animal orphanage they had there. That must have been in the 1960s. I remember there was a National Geographic article about the orphanage written by Prince Phillip, and that this baby gorilla was found clinging to the body of an adult which was dead. I guess the rest of the gorilla group just moved on and abandoned it. Sincerely Paul PS: I get the Netherlands and Belgium mixed up, since one was the Austrian Netherlands and the other was the Spanish Netherlands, and they each have lots of Dutch speaking people in them.
I found the article. It is titled: Orphans Of The Wild by Maj. Bruce G. Kinloch, M.C. It appeared in the Nov. 1962 National Geographic. The orphan mountain gorilla, named Reuben, was found next to the body of a dead adult male in the Virunga Mountains. He went to London Zoo with his friend Cleo the chimpanzee, and Uganda recieved $6000 for the pair. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
I too still get mixed up with Holland/Netherlands/Antwerp etc. in addition to their dictionaries. I find it difficult to believe that higher primates, such as Gorilla's would abandon an orphan, given the "interpreted propaganda" that were have been feed lately, where elephants rescue members, search for their ancestors bone yards, PTS Syndrome, tell fortunes, etc. etc. LOL
Wade
Dian Fossey also had two baby mountain gorillas, which appear on Bjorn's list (thanks for that). They were Pucker and Coco, who were sent to the National Zoo in Cologne. I believe that they were state gifts from Rwanda. I think that a group of gorillas might abandon a baby if they were being shot at. Maybe the adult male stayed to defend the baby and was killed for his trouble. Did you hear that a sixteen year old boy shot some children at the US National Zoo in 2000? One of the victims was brain dead. I heard nothing about it at the time. I'm sure it would have been a much bigger story if he had shot the pandas or some other animal. I have no idea why I thought that the Duke of Edinburgh wrote that story. I think he was President of the London Zoological Society at the time. Do they at least speak Dutch in Antwerp? Belgium must have been the Austrian Netherlands. Sincerely Paul PS: Chester Zoo also has another kind of monitor lizard which is longer than a Komodo dragon.
PS: I see that Reuben is also on Bjorn's list, but I think that the Bronx Zoo also had mountain gorillas at one point, and I know that gorillas have been reclassified into I think two species and a number of subspecies which include the Cross River Gorilla, but I forget all of the specifics of that. Sincerely Paul
I'd heard that the only true mountain gorilla exhibited in the U.S. was a young female on the Ringling Bros Circus in 1937. Probably didn't live long. The other "mountain" gorillas were actually eastern lowlands, a different sub-species. I remember seeing "mountain" gorillas at the Bronx and OKC. They had heavier coats and all but so do eastern lowlands.
Paul,
You are right. I had not heard about the incident at the National Zoo, but given the year was 2000, I suggest you are wrong about what would happen today. If you shot a Panda today at the National Zoo you could expect local and state coverage for two days. If you shot an Elephant today at the National Zoo you could expect a week of world wide Princess Dianna like Elephant candle light memorial vigils. If you shot a Tiger today at the National Zoo you could expect Mary Ann Howell to ride your ass into hell, which is more trouble than any sane person would want, so it is unlikely it will happen. LOL
Possibly Thomas, Bjorn, or Rob can clear up then Amsterdam/Belgium/Dutch mystery for us.
Here is a great "politically correct" joke for you, via Australian Steve Robinson, adapted to fit a Canadian.
A British archeologist digs down 20 feet in an English farm yard and finds a copper wire, and concludes in the scientific paper written on the find, that the British people were the first to invent and use a sophisticated form of telephone communication. Not to be outdone, an American archeologist digs down 30 feet in America, and he also finds copper wire, and writes in rebuttal in the scientific paper, that it is indeed the Colonists and not the Pommy, who invented and used a sophisticated form of telephone communication, contrary to earlier writing.
A Canadian archeologist digs down 50 feet in Montreal, and he finds fuck all, zip, notta. He writes a scientific paper concluding that although it is debated who invented and used the telephone first, the Poms or the Yanks, what is more important is that he had proven that by finding squat in his excavation, that it was without a doubt the Canadians who invented the first wireless form of communication. Oh Canada, My home and native land........
Wade
Wade, I'm a native of Detroit, and I'm not a Canadian. Besides I thought the telephone was invented by a Scot. Sincerely Paul
"If you shot a Tiger today at the National Zoo you could expect Mary Ann Howell to ride your ass into hell, which is more trouble than any sane person would want, so it is unlikely it will happen. LOL"
Wade so true! Ha Ha!
Happy New Year!
Mary Ann
That other giant lizard at Chester Zoo, besides the Komodo dragon, is a crocodile monitor lizard from Papua New Guinea. They have a pair they hope to breed. I was watching Last Chance To See the other night. They were hoping to find the last northern white rhino, four of them, in the wild, in a national park in the Congo, but no luck. I think the northern white rhino is now officially extinct in the wild, but there are still some in San Diego and in the Czech Republic, if I'm not mistaken. The previous week on Last Chance To See they went in search of pink dolphins in the Amazon River. They look just like the pink dolphins in the aquarium in Singapore, which I know are a different species from salt water. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
Is this where you wanted the comment? I am a pretty accommodating Yank, are I not?
I was just checking on the northern white rhino. According to ISIS there are four left in the world, two in Dvurkralv, in the Czech Republic, and two in the San Diego Wild Animal Park. San Diego has the one remaining male. There were supposed to have been four left in the wild, and they were planning to move them to a facility in Kenya, where they would have been safe. I also saw that Chester Zoo has been very successful breeding seahorses. They said they are the only fish with a prehensile tail, and at one time they thought they might have been insects, because of their hard exoskeletons. Sincerely Paul PS I should have left this message under the gorilla video, but it's too late now.
Wade, This is the right place. Thanks. Sincerely Paul
I read an interesting book when I was in high school titled Sasquatch, by a Swiss man named Rene Dahinden, who was a Bigfoot hunter. He reprinted a newspaper article from the 1800s titled: What Is It A British Columbia Gorilla? The article told the story of a supposed unknown ape-like creature which was found unconscious by some railroad tracks in British Columbia. According to the story the creature was taken in captivity and named Jacko. Jacko was sold to an English circus and nothing more is known about it. There was some speculation that the creature died during the trans-Atlantic crossing and was tossed overboard. There is also a long section excerpted from Teddy Roosevelt's journal about Bigfoot. The story was told to Roosevelt by a trapper. Rene Dahinden was an immigrant to Canada (in Alberta I think) who was working on a farm when he heard about an expedition in search of the yeti on the radio. He said "Would'nt it be something to be part of that?" Another farm hand said: "You don't have to go to the Himilayas to find those things. We've got them right here in British Columbia." That conversation determined the couse of Rene Dahinden's life. There were photographs in the book of Haida Indian carvings of something which I think was called the "Dsonqua", or something like that. These carvings are like Madonnas, they are of the cannibal woman, cradling her infant son. She is supposed to be the Sasquatch, which is Canadian for Bigfoot. It was an interesting book. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
I was the biggest skeptic in the world of any "sightings" such as you mention, but as they discover more and more "lost species" I have become less of a skeptic. I still don't believe it, but I truly want to be proven wrong.
Wade
Wade, thank you very much for this message. (I was expecting to be mercelessly ridiculed.) I was watching Destination Truth the other night and they were looking for a river monster in Gambia, which sounded like the local version of the supposed dinosaur in the Congo, I think in the former French-Congo to the north of the former Belgian-Congo. I'm not saying that I believe in any of these things either, it's just interesting to me that people report the same thing in so many different countries, something like Bigfoot, in Russia, China, Vietnam, Australia. And then there's the so-called "Hobbit" skeleton, which I thought has implications for the orang-pendek. Sincerely Paul
Paul,
The bigfoot/yeti creature seems the most far fetched to me, given that there are sightings all over the world, and not just in an area suited to the "species". That makes me think it is more myth/lore then actual fact, kinda like Santa Claus.
Wade
I was checking the book again to see if I could figure out where the picture was taken of Bernard Heuvelmans holding the gorilla. It's a big gorilla, not really a baby, an adolescent which looks like it could bite his face off. Maybe the picture was taken in Africa and the gorilla never made it to a zoo. The gorilla was named Kaisi, and according to the caption the picture was taken in 1961. It sure does'nt look like a Western Lowland Gorilla to me. Bernard Heuvelmans was born in France in 1916 and was still alive when the book was published in 1999. He wrote "Sur la piste des betes ignorees" in 1955, which was translated as On The Track Of Unknown Animals. I discovered this book in a library as a kid and it made a huge impression on me. On the subject of Bigfoot/Yeti I would have to ask why no physical remains like fossils have ever been found. I have heard that there is a giant jaw bone in a British Columbia museum which is believed to have come from a giant Indian. Sincerely Paul PS: I wonder what William Shatner would say.
We were talking about Peter Crowcroft somewhere. I read his book Zoo, and I wrote him a letter to tell him how much I liked it. He answered me saying that "It was'nt exactly a bestseller." In his book Zoo I read about how the ancient Greeks used the expression "a black swan" to mean something wildly improbable. I most recently saw John Stewart interview the author of a book, titled The Black Swan, I think about the economy, or something. It was definitely about something, but thanks to Peter Crowcroft I understood the title. Now there's a movie titled The Black Swan, I assume for the same reason, although I have'nt seen it. Peter Crowcroft is from Australia, so he is well acquainted with black swans. The ancient Greeks were not. Sincerely Paul
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