Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Gorilla | Date: Dec 16 2007 | By: admin

Now that the dust has settled a little after the arrival of the ‘Taiping Four’ I can begin to introduce you all to these infamous gorillas. The three females are called Oyin, Abbey and Tinu, and the lone male is Izan.

• Oyin is the largest and the dominant gorilla in the group. She is very confident and is very protective over her group. New people who approach their enclosure are soon left with a clear understanding of whose area they have entered into. She thumps her chest and mock charges, throwing branches and leaves in her annoyance at the unsolicited visitor. Oyin has already developed a large crest on the back of her head, yet her tendency to pluck the hairs asymmetrically around her face gives her a slightly intimidating appearance.

• Abbey is the most sensitive gorilla in the group. During the long journey from South Africa to Limbe it was Abbey who need most attention during the journey and who gave me the most concern during our long lay over in Nairobi. Whilst the other gorillas sat quietly, Abbey was very stressed pacing around her crate, trying to break out all the time. Abbey is a typical western lowland gorilla with a beautiful cap of red hair on top of her head. In fact she looks very like one of our other gorillas here at the Limbe Wildlife Centre, Brighter. Who knows, perhaps they were taken from a similar area of forest?

• Tinu, the smallest female, is the neediest of attention. Sit by the enclosure for a few minutes a Tinu will soon come up to present her back for grooming, or stick her out her arm so that she can hold hands. Tinu, an unusual looking gorilla with short round features and a big fat belly with a cleft down the middle, is easily recognisable. On arrival she had a large circular ring worm lesion on her left shoulder that we are currently treating.

• The lone male of the group is Izan, who is an absolutely gorgeous looking young black-back gorilla. He is currently all legs and arms, but from the size of his hands it seems that in a few years he will have grown into an enormous silver back. Izan is just beginning to learn the postural behaviour of a male gorilla, side walking up to new comers, lips sucked in and eyes looking elsewhere. The drooping bottom lip, however, somehow ruins his tough guy stance.

The addition of these four gorillas to our program is a great responsibility and we are very proud to look after them. However, the cost of doing so is not small and we really need financial assistance, and we were hoping that the readers of Wildlife Direct may be able to help. The following is a brief guide to a few of the costs we are now incurring to look after these four young gorillas:

• The price of milk powder, from which we make yogurt, is costing us $60 per month just for these four gorillas.
• Fruit and vegetables for the gorillas that are purchased from local produce growers are costing us $200 per month.
• Finally, gorillas eat a lot of browse in the wild and it is important, for their health that we try to mimic this natural diet as much as possible. To do so, however, requires large quantities of browse, some of which are not grown in Limbe. So, three times a week we make the 3hr drive up onto the slopes of Mount Cameroon to collect a plant called afromomum, a species from the ginger family. The journey, which costs $45 in fuel every week, is a critical part of the gorillas rehabilitation as it enables them, for the first time since they were taken from the forest as infants, to have the pleasure of stripping the bark off of the very same plants that their parents would have eaten, in search for the juicy pith within.

These are just a few of the costs that we are struggling to cover in order to look after our new charges. Any help that the readers of Wildlife Direct can give will be most warmly welcomed and will, I can assure you, be used very carefully for the care of these noble creatures. Thank you.