Science Club: Don Moore

In which DCist interviews area scientists, researchers, and academics on topics pertaining to natural and scientific interests. As Thomas Dolby would say: science!

Don Moore is the Associate Director for Animal Care at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. As a zoo-based wildlife biologist, Moore has helped to create conservation and animal-management plans for zoos and wild animals in nature for more than 30 years. He worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York as a curator and zoo director and has published more than four dozen papers on animal husbandry and behavior. Moore helped to launch the “Managing Animal Enrichment and Training Programs” course at George Mason University as well as the Animal Behavior and Conservation at Hunter College in New York. He appears as a guest scientist in Adventures of Riley: Polar Bear Puzzle by Amanda Lumry and Laura Hurwitz.

DCist: Is this the first gorilla that's been born in the zoo?

Don Moore: No, Mandara's had five infants before. This is her sixth.

Is this likely her last?

I don't know. It depends on how important she is genetically, how many babies her offspring can have, what the gorilla population is doing in zoos. We're part of the species survival plan, so it's a group decision. That's not a decision I can make. This one may or may not be a female. We have a 50/50 chance. Her other infants have been males. Sometimes when you have a female that animal is more important than a male. A whole bunch of different criteria will go into the decision whether to breed her.

In this case would a female be more important than a male?

I think in this case a female would be more important than a male, just because, to carry the gene line on steadily, it's important to have a female—to carry some link traits that are linked through the female. But who knows. The geneticists will tell us that?

How does the National Zoo factor into the species survival plan?

We're members of the Association for Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) species survival plan. All of the AZA species survival plan are a regional portion of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) species survival plan. So, we're part of that. We have a very important population here: six animals, now seven. Of 52 zoos nationwide, we have one of the better breeding groups. We have a beautiful silverback male—

Baraka, who was raised here.

That's correct. He left and came back. He's a very cool male. He was born here in 1992. He left to become a mature male and came back as a silverback.

Came back a man.

That's right. Now, the Swahili word baraka can mean blessing, as we've all heard these days. Or it can mean white. So the blessing to have a silverback, a white-backed male, is a pretty big thing. He's a cool guy. He's 10 years younger than the female. Maybe women out there would be interested in that.

This hookup was scandalous. Mandara helped to rear him, and then he came back—

She's not his mom. His mom was Haloko. Yeah, [Mandara] was kind of his nurse, and now she's the mom of his baby.

Photo by DCist photograph Meaghan Gay

How did you know she was pregnant?

We watch every single one of our animals every single day. When they were dating, the zookeepers could watch a lot of that dating process. They actually predicted the birth around Thanksgiving time. They did it again three to four weeks after that, which would put it right around the Christmas holidays. So then they said, okay, we were wrong about that and there will be a birth in January. So then there was a birth in January.

When a gorilla is pregnant, does her behavior change?

Not noticeably. Did her look change? Right around November, we saw some breast development. Because they're bamboo and vegetable eaters, they have big bellies anyway, so it's hard for me to tell they're pregnant, but keepers who work with them every day will notice that change, even if it's 2 or 3 pounds only.

The day of the birth, the entire group was following Mandara around. That day and the day before.

Why?

Their hormones change, and other species—maybe humans too—can smell that hormonal change. So they were interested. After the birth, her sons were very interested. One was throwing straw at her. She's a very tolerant mom.

What are the risks for a newborn gorilla?

The current best practice in zoos is to keep the great apes behind glass. That's because there is a risk of transmission of any kind of disease from human to great ape. Cold, measles—anything we get vaccinated for as children, we could potentially transfer it to the great apes. We are very careful about limiting access behind the scenes. The veterinarians don't go back there. I don't go back there. The keepers only go back behind the scenes and have direct contact with the gorillas. So the biggest risk would be some kind of disease or flu transmission to the baby—just like it would be with a human baby.

They're here in a controlled environment. These animals are from the Western Lowlands in the tropics. We wouldn't let a baby out even into cool air, because environmental conditions can affect their health. Just like you'd protect a human baby from cool weather.

But the zoo no longer goes so far as to take the babies out and raise them away from the gorillas?

We would prefer to not hand-rear. We prefer mother-rearing. We have large exhibits, large social groups, and we'd prefer to see natural behavior everywhere.

Is that a policy decision? To have mothers rear rather than to try to hand-rear?

That's an ethical decision to allow the moms to rear. If a baby were endangered, would we step in and help? Sure. We've got a whole team of doctors and behaviorists and we could probably do that. But the bottom line would be to get the baby back into the natural group as soon as possible. You want it to develop those natural behaviors.

What are the next three years like for this gorilla?

Sticks with mom a lot. Mandara will probably try to wean this baby pretty fast. That's what she did with the boys. As we said, we don't know what the sex is. Maybe she'll dote on a daughter—who knows.

This baby male or female will stay with this gorilla group until she's much older. Her brothers are still in there and they're older. Three of her brothers are there. The others have gone on to different programs, where the species survival plan has asked us to move them.

Where's Baraka in all this?

He's over in the corner, eating. He's staying off to himself, tolerating it all. He's pretty good with youngsters and he's shown that before.

Do gorilla dad have any responsibilities?

They have to protect the whole group! They don't have so much rearing responsibilities as role-model responsibilities. He'll just sit there being his silverback self, and hopefully the boys will take notice.

How long can it take to determine the sex?

It can take a long time. Think about a gorilla: Their hands are massive. The baby is not. The babies are only 4 or 5 pounds. Think of something the size of a small human infant being held by this big mom with massive hands, whose holding her [sic] right beneath the butt. And we don't have a doctor to lift this baby up and look at it. We can see directly between the legs sometimes, but not very far forward. We haven't gotten a very good look. We want several people to get a very good look before we declare it. We've had one slight look.

What was the call?

I'm not saying! Whatever I say, it's sure to be wrong.

Does the zoo system play into what the United Nations has called "the Year of the Gorilla"?

Yes. We're a member of WAZA, one of the main proponents of Year of the Gorilla. Year of the Gorilla is declared to help focus attention on gorillas, because they're such a critically endangered species.

We've now found a new group, way, way, way away from human. Fifty miles away from the nearest road, there is a group of 100,000 gorillas. That's the estimate. They were discovered this year in a deep swamp area of Congo.

What we know is where humans have gone over the last 20 years, there's been over an 80 percent reduction in gorilla populations. Because of Ebola disease transmitted by humans, because of habitat destruction by humans, logging, mining, the bush meat trade—where native humans around the world are taking animals out of their wild environments and selling them on the market for meat. Gorillas are affected by all three of these dire threats. They aren't in this area of Congo. We hope Congo will protect this whole area and all of those gorillas.

Still, gorillas are critically endangered, and Year of the Gorilla calls attention to that and allows us to do conservation research and education in good zoos around the world and to engage and inspire visitors if they can.

Ultimately, is this region a place where scientists would like to go?

Sure. There are other scientists other than National Zoo scientists who are doing that. We at the Smithsonian National Zoo do cognitive research. How the brain and the mind work. Our orangutans, our great apes from southeast Asia get to travel on the O Line and go choose to work on a computer with a researcher. That's their cognitive work.

The researchers are doing some new cognitive work with the great apes as well, and what we hope to show is that these gorillas are so spectacular, so similar to humans, that people will really care about keeping them around and not letting them go extinct.